Water Data Directory

Multi-country (Arab States)·Arab Region

Water resources research and data for Arab arid regions from the Arab League's technical organization, covering groundwater, irrigation efficiency, and water harvesting in dry environments.

France·National

National portal for groundwater data in France, providing access to piezometric levels, groundwater quality measurements, and hydrogeological information from thousands of monitoring points.

Europe·Alpine region (6 countries)

Alpine Drought Observatory hydrological database: daily discharge from 1,436 stations and water level from 936 stations across Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland (1869-2022), each with >10-year records. Access via WMS, GIS/R clients and a Python script.

Afghanistan·Afghanistan nationwide with focus on drought-prone agricultural regions

World Bank-supported cloud-based drought early warning system with meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural drought monitoring for food security

Afghanistan·FAO AQUASTAT country profile

Central Asian water security research

Niger·Africa

African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development drought advisory portal providing continental drought monitoring indicators and advisory bulletins for Africa.

International·Africa

Open mapping community providing geospatial data and tools across Africa, including hydrology, wetland and surface-water layers accessible through ArcGIS-based services.

Pan-Africa (51 countries)·Continental

British Geological Survey / IAH Africa Groundwater Atlas: hydrogeology summaries for 51 African countries plus downloadable Country Hydrogeology Maps (GIS files at ~1:5,000,000) for 38 countries, covering aquifers, groundwater status, climate, rivers, soils and land cover.

Continental Africa·Continental

NERC Open Research Archive user guide and documentation for the Africa Groundwater Atlas country hydrogeology GIS maps (1:5 million aquifer type/productivity and geology) released as digital GIS layers for 38 African countries.

Continental Africa·Continental

Continental dataset of African water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, lagoons) as polygon GeoJSON and shapefile, curated from the RCMRD Geoportal under CC-BY 4.0 and downloadable from the energydata.info open data catalogue.

Africa·AfDB member countries

African water infrastructure

Africa·Continental (major African river basins)

Pan-African portal indexing water information across African river basin organizations, providing access to documents, datasets, and data on major river basins including Niger, Congo, and Senegal

Africa-wide·63000+ river segments, 2001-2021

International Water Management Institute resource hub for the high-resolution African river discharge dataset (VegET + mizuRoute coupled modelling) covering 60,000+ river segments, supporting water security and resource management across Africa. Resources page links to data and documentation.

South Africa·National

Developer API exposing South African Weather Service data feeds (forecast, lightning, storms) as programmatic endpoints for South Africa, enabling integration of official meteorological and severe-weather data.

Africa·13 West African and Sahel countries

CILSS regional centre providing satellite-based monitoring of rainfall, vegetation, drought, and water resources for 13 West African/Sahel member states with a Regional Watch Room for real-time climate extremes

United States·US agricultural water management

Irrigation and water management practices data

United States·Regional

WSU's network of 550+ agricultural weather stations providing near-real-time weather, soil moisture, reference and crop-specific daily ET estimates, and irrigation scheduling tools for Washington's irrigated regions.

India·National

India AI-KOSH open government data repository hosting nationwide surface and river water-quality datasets (pH, BOD, DO, heavy metals) collected under Central Water Commission and CPCB monitoring programmes from 1963 onward, available for download.

India·India (national)

India's national AI dataset hub (IndiaAI) entry for CWC reservoir storage levels (billion cubic metres) under the Open Government License India. Part of AIKosh's centralized, AI-ready Indian datasets.

India·India (rural)

India AI dataset platform hosting Jal Jeevan Mission / National Rural Drinking Water Programme data on rural household tap water connection coverage across Indian states and districts. Downloadable structured dataset.

India·India (national)

National waterbodies and reservoir network dataset based on India's Census of Water Bodies, giving number, type and distribution of water bodies to support river-basin planning, irrigation infrastructure assessment and surface-water/storage analysis. Hosted on IndiaAI's AIKosh.

Australia·Great Barrier Reef

THREDDS catalogue serving eReefs hydrodynamic and biogeochemical model outputs for the Great Barrier Reef - temperature, salinity, currents, nutrients, sediment and ocean colour across catchments, estuaries and reef lagoon.

Canada·Alberta

Government of Alberta network of ~306 observation wells with current and historical groundwater levels, accessible through an interactive map with per-well water-level data and well information.

Canada·Alberta Province

Real-time and historical water data for Alberta's major river basins including the North Saskatchewan, South Saskatchewan, Bow, Athabasca, and Peace rivers with flow, level, and water quality data.

Canada·Regional

Government of Alberta map-based tool for searching, viewing and downloading surface water-quality data from monitoring stations across the province, including the Tributary Monitoring Network covering 70+ tributaries and ~30 lakes/reservoirs.

Algeria·Sahara Observatory data

North African water research center

Japan·Fukushima coastal sea area

Japan Ministry of the Environment downloadable database of seawater radioactivity monitoring (tritium and other isotope concentrations, flow rates) associated with the discharge of ALPS treated water near Fukushima Daiichi, aggregating MoE, Fisheries Agency, MLIT, Coast Guard and TEPCO sea-area monitoring.

Brazil·Amazon Basin

Rainforest hydrological monitoring system

Africa·Continental (55 AU member states)

Africa's continent-wide automated monitoring system capturing harmonised water and sanitation progress indicators across all 55 African Union member states with maps and analytics

Brazil·Brazil nationwide water resources

Brazilian National Water Agency - SNIRH National Water Resources Information System

Spain·Andalusia, Spain

Daily reservoir-reserve data for Andalusia's hydrographic demarcations from 2009 to present, with the option to download data in reusable formats via Spain's national open data platform.

Australia·Australia

ANUClimate 2.0 daily and monthly 0.01 degree gridded rainfall, temperature and related climate variables for Australia, 1970-present, with full metadata in the OneClimate research data repository.

Australia·Australia

ANUClimate 0.01 degree gridded climate surfaces for the Australian continent (precipitation and derived rain-day metrics) produced with ANUSPLIN thin-plate splines, served through Australia's national data portal and NCI THREDDS.

Australia·Australia and Southern Ocean

Open gateway to Australian marine and climate science data from IMOS and partners, with catalogue search and download of ocean temperature, salinity, currents and other variables in multiple formats.

USA·Alaska

Alaska real-time sensor map and data explorer aggregating >7,000 live sensors from 2,500+ marine and terrestrial stations, served via Axiom's sensor API and ERDDAP-style services.

Japan·Asia, Middle East, Eurasia

Long-term daily gridded rain-gauge-based precipitation dataset for monsoon Asia, the Middle East and northern Eurasia (0.25 and 0.5 degree), plus high-resolution Japan product. Latest APHRODITE versions and update data are released from the Hirosaki University project site.

Global·Global

FAO's global information system on water resources and agricultural water management. Provides country-level data on water withdrawal, irrigation area, wastewater, and water use efficiency for 200+ countries.

Africa·Sub-Saharan Africa & global

Aquaya nonprofit research organization's Urban WASH Resource Hub and research outputs providing data, tools and evidence on water quality, sanitation and hygiene services in low-resource settings to support data-driven WASH decisions.

Denmark·Denmark

Danish Environmental Portal spatial-data service for hydrometry and groundwater, giving map access and download of water-level, discharge and groundwater monitoring data across Denmark.

Argentina·National

Research and monitoring data from Argentina's National Water Institute covering hydrology, hydraulics, water resources management, flood warning systems, and water quality studies.

Argentina·National / Basin (La Plata)

Argentina's National Water Institute Systems of Information and Hydrological Alert (SIyAH) providing a catalogue and viewer of near-real-time and forecast hydrological data (river heights and flows) for major Argentine basins including the Plata system. Distinct operational forecasting product from the INA institutional homepage.

Argentina·National hydrological network

Argentina's national hydrological information system providing validated historical data and real-time telemetric station data in CSV, JSON, GeoJSON, and GeoTIFF formats under Creative Commons

Global·Global ocean to 2000m depth

Global ocean profiling network with 4000+ autonomous floats

United States·State (Arizona, USA)

Arizona DWR open data hub providing the Groundwater Site Inventory (GWSI) field-verified well and spring data and Wells-55 registry, downloadable as Shapefile, CSV, KML, GeoJSON and GeoTIFF via ArcGIS Online.

United States·Sub-national

Arizona DWR ArcGIS Open Data portal offering wells, groundwater site inventory (GWSI), water levels, depth-to-water and related water-resource datasets for download and as services.

Italy·Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Free data-extraction web app of Arpae-SIMC (Emilia-Romagna, Italy) for the regional RIRER monitoring network. Provides river discharge, water level, precipitation, temperature and other variables with export to CSV, XLS and PDF.

Italy·Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Regional environmental agency open datasets covering hydro-meteorological observations, climate indicators, drought monitoring and the Dexter time-series download system for the Emilia-Romagna region of the Po basin.

Slovenia·Slovenia nationwide water monitoring

Slovenian Environment Agency - national environmental data provider with precipitation and discharge archives

Multi-country (ASEAN)·Southeast Asia

Regional weather and climate monitoring for Southeast Asia including transboundary haze, rainfall anomalies, drought monitoring, and seasonal climate outlooks for ASEAN nations.

Global·Global, 30m resolution, 30km swath

Italian Space Agency hyperspectral Earth observation mission providing 30m resolution imagery across 400-2500nm for inland water quality monitoring including turbidity, chlorophyll-a, and algae detection

Asia-Pacific·ADB member countries

Asia-Pacific water security

Canada·Regional

Open-access online hub launched in 2018 to access, visualize and download full water-quality datasets across the Atlantic provinces of Canada, aggregating community and agency monitoring of nutrients, physical and chemical parameters.

Japan·Global ocean surface, strongest coverage in Pacific and Atlantic

Global database of ocean surface microplastic monitoring data, quality-controlled under harmonized guidelines. Provides 2D gridded maps and downloadable open data with comparability grading for each dataset.

New Zealand·Regional (Auckland)

Auckland Council's environmental monitoring portal providing live rainfall, river flow, groundwater and air quality data sourced from its Hydstra/Hydrotel databases, plus a Water Quality and River Ecology Data Explorer covering Tamaki Makaurau rivers, lakes, groundwater and coast. Monitoring sites are published via the council's public ArcGIS REST services.

New Zealand·Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland Council open data portal to discover, analyse and download environmental datasets (including rainfall and water-quality layers) in CSV, KML and GeoJSON with GeoServices, WMS and WFS API links.

Australia·3500+ stations

Australian water monitoring

Australia·Continental Australia

Rainfall deficiencies analysis using deciles methodology with historical comparison since 1900

Australia·All Australian states and territories

National flood forecasting and warning service with real-time river and rainfall data

Australia·Antarctica / Southern Ocean

Primary data centre for the Australian Antarctic Program hosting ~2,000 Southern Ocean and Antarctic datasets including CTD water temperature/salinity, oceanographic and environmental monitoring records, with DOIs and a metadata catalogue.

Australia·Australia

Australian Gridded Climate Data v2 monthly precipitation totals (~5 km), the Bureau of Meteorology's official analysis dataset for Australia from 1900, with metadata and access via the Geoscience Australia geospatial portal.

Australia·National

Australian federal, state, and territory PFAS contamination monitoring data under the PFAS NEMP 3.0 framework, including investigation sites, environmental samples, and firefighting foam legacy contamination.

Australia·Australia nationwide

Historical and recent rainfall maps with percentiles and anomalies

Australia·Australia nationwide forecasts

BOM hydroclimate forecasts and projections platform

Austria·Alpine research network

Alpine hydrology research institute

Global·Global oceans, multi-mission, 1993-present

CNES French satellite altimetry archive providing sea surface height, sea level anomaly, geostrophic velocities, and ocean topography from multi-mission altimeter data (Jason, Sentinel-3/6, SARAL) since 1993

Finland·Finland

Finland's national open data portal (CKAN) hosting hydrological and environmental datasets from SYKE, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and others, including river/lake observations and forecasts, with full API access.

Multi-country (Arab States)·Middle East and North Africa

Water utility performance benchmarking data for Arab water utilities including technical and financial indicators, service coverage, and non-revenue water metrics.

Germany·Polar / Global

Alfred Wegener Institute sea-ice portal serving CryoSat-2 radar-altimetry-derived sea-ice freeboard, thickness and snow depth products plus combined ICESat-2/CryoSat-2 datasets relevant to the cryospheric water cycle.

Global·Cloud-based CMIP6 access

Amazon Web Services open data registry for CMIP6

Global·Global, multiple satellite missions on AWS

Collection of freely accessible satellite imagery datasets hosted on AWS including Sentinel, Landsat, GOES, NOAA, and environmental monitoring data optimized for cloud-based analysis

United States·United States & Canada

American Water Works Association utility benchmarking program providing 60+ key performance indicators for North American drinking water and wastewater utilities, plus annual rates/operational survey data products for utility comparison.

United States·Regional

University of Arizona network of automated weather stations providing reference and actual evapotranspiration, heat units, chill hours, and weather data for irrigation and agricultural management in central and southern Arizona.

Germany·National

Undine flood information portal of the German Federal Institute of Hydrology providing comprehensive historical flood data and long-term hydrological time series for major German rivers.

Bahrain·National

Water production and distribution statistics for the Kingdom of Bahrain including desalination output, water consumption data, and water network performance indicators.

Bahrain·National

Bahrain's national open data portal (Information & eGovernment Authority), an OpenDataSoft platform with 390+ datasets from 35+ entities including Environment and Electricity & Water sector data and marine/seawater analysis from the Supreme Council for the Environment. Datasets are previewable and downloadable with full OpenDataSoft API access.

Bahrain·National

Statistics reports section of Bahrain's national open data portal (OpenDataSoft) consolidating sector statistics including environment and electricity & water indicators for the Kingdom of Bahrain, downloadable in machine-readable formats.

Bangladesh·Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta

World's largest river delta studies

Bangladesh·National Bangladesh river systems

Real-time flood forecasting system with 10-day forecasts using satellite imagery, weather radar, and water level data

Bangladesh·Bangladesh river basins

Comprehensive hydrological data and flood forecasting managed by Chief Engineer Hydrology

Bangladesh·National monitoring network

Weather and hydrological data

Bangladesh·Bangladesh (national)

Humanitarian Data Exchange dataset of Bangladesh river/watercourse line features (OpenStreetMap-derived, regularly refreshed) usable for hydrology, flood mapping and basin GIS work. Downloadable as geospatial files.

Bangladesh·National water infrastructure

National water resources management

Bangladesh·Bangladesh (national)

HDX dataset of Bangladesh waterbody polygons (lakes, ponds, wetlands) derived from OpenStreetMap, useful for surface-water extent, flood and water-resource analyses. Regularly updated and downloadable.

Spain·25% water conservation achieved

City-wide IoT water management

Portugal·Portugal

Portuguese national dams information portal providing data and documentation on large dams in Portugal, including reservoir and dam characteristics relevant to water resources management.

Europe·Basque Country 1995-2023

AI-ready marine biodiversity dataset 1995-2023

Canada·British Columbia

BC Hydro near-real-time and historical reservoir elevations, lake levels, stream levels/flows and snow water equivalents for British Columbia reservoir systems, in tabular downloads.

Canada·British Columbia

British Columbia water availability tool providing watershed-level streamflow, water demand and licensing analysis for assessing water availability across BC.

Canada·British Columbia Province

British Columbia's water resources mapping tool providing data on water wells, aquifers, water licences, streamflow stations, and water quality monitoring locations across the province.

Global·Global bias-corrected daily data

Bias correction constructed analogues with quantile mapping

USA·Global oceans

Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (Woods Hole) ERDDAP with ~2,500 datasets of marine biogeochemistry, nutrients, and water-column observations from research cruises.

Germany·Germany

German Association of Energy and Water Industries statistics and 'Profile of the German Water Sector' reports covering drinking water supply, wastewater, prices and the VEWA international comparison of water and wastewater charges.

France·France nationwide groundwater systems

National hydrogeological database with groundwater monitoring and state assessment by BRGM

China·China - National climate and hydrological monitoring

China Meteorological Administration's climate center providing precipitation, climate services, and water-related climate data

Belgium·Flemish water research

European lowlands water studies

Germany·National

Real-time and historical water level, discharge, and temperature data from over 500 gauging stations across Germany's federal waterways, operated by the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG).

Germany·Global

The world's largest archive of river discharge data from over 10,000 stations in 161 countries. Hosted at the German Federal Institute of Hydrology in Koblenz.

United Kingdom·Continental (Africa)

British Geological Survey Africa Groundwater Atlas project providing country-by-country hydrogeology and groundwater resource information plus continental quantitative maps of groundwater storage, productivity and depth.

United Kingdom·National (England & Wales)

Aquifer designation dataset classifying bedrock and superficial geology of England and Wales into Principal, Secondary (A/B/undifferentiated) and Unproductive aquifers, jointly owned by BGS and the Environment Agency.

Bangladesh·61 of 64 districts, 3,534+ boreholes

British Geological Survey arsenic contamination data from Bangladesh including DPHE/BGS National Hydrochemical Survey of 3,534 boreholes across 61 districts, BWDB monitoring network of 113 boreholes, and Special Study Areas with 271 samples. Downloadable CSV datasets