Water exploitation index (WEI) — in late 1980s/early 1990s (WEI‑90) compared to latest years available (1998 to 2007)

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Created : Feb 24, 2011 Published : Feb 24, 2011 Last modified : Nov 29, 2012 11:39 AM

WEI: annual total water abstraction as a percentage of available long-term freshwater resources.

This is the latest published version. .

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/water-exploitation-index-wei-4/signals-cc-adaptation-fig2.eps/image_original

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European data

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WEI underpinning data XLS

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Last upload:

24 Feb 2011

Dynamic

Temporal coverage:

1998-2007

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Geographical coverage:

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Austria Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey United Kingdom

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EEA standard re-use policy: unless otherwise indicated, re-use of content on the EEA website for commercial or non-commercial purposes is permitted free of charge, provided that the source is acknowledged (http://www.eea.europa.eu/legal/copyright). Copyright holder: European Environment Agency (EEA).

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European Environment Agency (EEA)

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Figure type:

Graph

Additional information

The warning threshold, which distinguishes a non-stressed from a water scarce region, is around 20 %, with severe scarcity occurring where the WEI exceeds 40 %.

WEI (water exploitation index) divides the total water abstraction by the long-term annual average resource. However, this indicator does not fully reflect the level of stress upon local water resources: this is primarily because the WEI is based on annual data and cannot, therefore, account for seasonal variations in water availability and abstraction.