SAEON Observations Database
South African Environmental Observation Network database of long-term environmental monitoring including coupled hydrological systems (rivers, water quality, soil moisture). Holds tens of millions of verified observations across hundreds of stations, each dataset assigned a DOI (10.15493/obsdb...) under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
observations.saeon.ac.za
At a glance
- Region
- South Africa (Africa)
- Coverage
- National
- Access
- Free
- Category
- Research Institute
- Last updated
- 2026
What's inside
- hydrology
- water quality
- soil moisture
- environmental observations
Terms explained
What you can do with it
Typical work that data of this type supports.
- 01
Design flows
Estimate 1-in-50 and 1-in-100 year floods for bridges, culverts and spillways.
Because it has: hydrology
- 02
Low flows
Set environmental flows and check what is left in the river in a dry year.
- 03
Hotspots and trends
Find where contamination is high and whether it is getting worse.
Because it has: water quality
Where AI adds value
Ideas for machine learning and AI agents built on this kind of data.
- 01
Flow forecasting
Train LSTM-style models on past records to forecast river levels and flow days ahead.
- 02
Ungauged basins
Combine with catchment data to estimate flow where there is no gauge.
- 03
Risk maps
Predict contamination where no samples exist, from geology, land use and climate.
Machine access and documentation
Open API
Public REST/OData WebAPI at observationsapi.saeon.ac.za with OpenAPI (Swagger) docs
Licence: Open data
Listed in our registry of open water APIs, which WaterDataGPT can query live.
Related water data
- Open Data South Africa Toolkit - Water & Climate ResourcesAfrica | Free
- SAEON Observations Database WebAPIAfrica | Free
- EFTEON Spatial Data (Expanded Freshwater & Terrestrial Environmental Observation Network)Africa | Free
- Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM)Africa | Free
- SAEON Data Portal (catalogue)Africa | Free
- Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment - Directorate of Water Resources ManagementAfrica | Free
Find more water data
Search and compare 1,900+ water data sources by region, type and access.