Data

Waterbase - Water Quantity

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Prod-ID: DAT-58-en

Created 29 Mar 2011 Published 30 Mar 2011 Last modified 15 Dec 2022

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Topics: Water and marine environment

This page was archived on 24 Aug 2017 with reason: A new version has been published (There is a new published version.)

Waterbase is the generic name given to the EEA's databases on the status and quality of Europe's rivers, lakes, groundwater bodies and transitional, coastal and marine waters, and on the quantity of Europe's water resources

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Waterbase - Water Quantity (9 tables)

Dataset contains all time series related to water quantity data, reported by member and collaborating countries. Reported data have been assessed and processed by the ETC-ICM and the EEA. Results of quality assessment have been incorporated into the individual data tables.

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Geographical Entities of Water Quantity monitoring (Waterbase_WQ_v6_gentities, 6646 records)

Geographical entities of the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring. They may be related to areas such as River Basin Districts (RBD), Sub-Units (SU) or Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS). Fields RBDcode, SubUnitCode and NUTS refer to the area in which the geographical entity is located or to which it belongs.

Field name	Definition	Note	data type
RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
GEntityName	Name of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the name of the station. If it is a region it gives the name of the region.		text(200)
GEntityType	Type of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related.	C - Country RBD - River Basin District NUTS - Level 1, 2 or 3 of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics SU - Sub-Unit W - Well R - Reservoir RG - Rain Gauge Station SF - Stream flow station LI - Large Item (City, Industry, Agricultural Unit)	text(4)
RBDcode	River Basin District Code		text(20)
SubUnitCode	National identification code of Sub-Unit.		text(50)
NUTS	The lowest possible level code of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS1, NUTS2 or NUTS3) in which the geographical entity is located.		text(5)

Characteristics of Rain Gauge Stations (Waterbase_WQ_v6_rain_gauge_station, 2685 records)

Basic information on rain gauge stations used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring. It is assumed that these stations were used to calculate the areal precipitation requested in the water balance of this area (see table WQ-area).

Field name	Definition	Note	data type
RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
Longitude	International geographical longitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Latitude	International geographical latitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Altitude	Altitude of station in metres above sea level.		long
RiverBasinName	Name of river basin where the station is located.		text(255)
RiverBasinArea	Area (in km2) of river basin where the station is located.		decimal
SubcatchmentName	Name of sub-catchment where the station is located.		text(255)
SubcatchmentArea	Area (in km2) of sub-catchment where the station is located.		decimal
WFDstation	Specification yes / no, whether the monitoring station was reported to European Commission as Water Framework Directive, Article 8 monitoring station.		text(3)
EIONETstation	Specification yes / no, whether the monitoring station was reported as EIONET station.		text(3)
DataPeriod_from	Starting year of available data		long
DataPeriod_to	Ending year of available data		long
TimeScale	Smallest possible scale of available data that can be provided upon request.		text(8)
QA_station_issues	Quality assessment field - stations data quality issues flag	List of codes of Gentity specific data issues detected in the record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)

Characteristics of Reservoirs (Waterbase_WQ_v6_reservoirs, 89 records)

Basic information on reservoirs used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring. The total volume of water entering in (Inflow) and released from (Outflow) a natural or manmade reservoir in various temporal scales may be stored in table WQ-time_series.

Field name	Definition	Note	data type
RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
Longitude	International geographical longitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Latitude	International geographical latitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
ReservoirType	Reservoir type	Natural, Man-made	text(8)
StorageCapacity	Storage capacity of the reservoir in hm3.		decimal
LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
QA_station_issues	Quality assessment field - stations data quality issues flag	List of codes of Gentity specific data issues detected in the record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)

Characteristics of Stream Flow Stations (Waterbase_WQ_v6_stream_flow_stations, 539 records)

Basic information on stream flow stations used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring. Measured stream flow data on selected gauging stations within the RBD at daily time scale may be also stored in table WQ-TimeSeries. This table stores metadata of stream flow measurements and supplementary statistics such as mean, min, max, monthly values plus the dates of min and max observations.

Field name	Definition	Note	data type
RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
Longitude	International geographical longitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Latitude	International geographical latitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Altitude	Altitude of station in metres above sea level.		long
RiverName	National name of river.		text(150)
RiverBasinName	Name of river basin where the station is located.		text(255)
RiverBasinArea	Area (in km2) of river basin where the station is located.		decimal
SubcatchmentName	Name of sub-catchment where the station is located.		text(255)
SubcatchmentArea	Area (in km2) of sub-catchment where the station is located.		decimal
WFDstation	Specification yes / no, whether the monitoring station was reported to European Commission as Water Framework Directive, Article 8 monitoring station.		text(3)
EIONETstation	Specification yes / no, whether the monitoring station was reported as EIONET station.		text(3)
DataPeriod_from	Starting year of available data		long
DataPeriod_to	Ending year of available data		long
MinDischarge	Lowest recorded stream flow in m3/s.		decimal
MinDischarge_date	Date of the lowest recorded stream flow in format YYYY-MM-DD.		text(10)
MaxDischarge	Highest recorded stream flow in m3/s.		decimal
MaxDischarge_date	Date of the highest recorded stream flow in format YYYY-MM-DD.		text(10)
LTAA	Long Term Annual Average in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month1	Long term average stream flow of month 1 (January) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month2	Long term average stream flow of month 2 (February) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month3	Long term average stream flow of month 3 (March) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month4	Long term average stream flow of month 4 (April) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month5	Long term average stream flow of month 5 (May) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month6	Long term average stream flow of month 6 (June) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month7	Long term average stream flow of month 7 (July) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month8	Long term average stream flow of month 8 (August) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month9	Long term average stream flow of month 9 (September) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month10	Long term average stream flow of month 10 (October) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month11	Long term average stream flow of month 11 (November) in m3/s.		decimal
LTA_month12	Long term average stream flow of month 12 (December) in m3/s.		decimal
LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
QA_station_issues	Quality assessment field - stations data quality issues flag	List of codes of Gentity specific data issues detected in the record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)

Characteristics of Wells (Waterbase_WQ_v6_wells, 1059 records)

Basic information on wells used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring (groundwater level measuring). Groundwater level observations from wells located within the reporting unit (RBD or other) in various temporal scales may be stored in table WQ-time_series.

RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
Longitude	International geographical longitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Latitude	International geographical latitude (x) co-ordinate in decimal degrees format.		decimal
Altitude	Altitude of station in metres above sea level.		long
GWBname	Name of the groundwater body		text(255)
GWBoutsideRB	Flag identifying whether or not the groundwater body is expanding outside the river basin.		text(1)
GWBoutsideRBD	Flag identifying whether or not the groundwater body is expanding outside the river basin district.		text(1)
MinLevel_month	Month in which the minimum groundwater level is expected.		long
MaxLevel_month	Month in which the maximummum groundwater level is expected.		long
LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA).		long
LTAA	Long Term Annual Average in m.		decimal
QA_station_issues	Quality assessment field - stations data quality issues flag	List of codes of Gentity specific data issues detected in the record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)

Characteristics of Large Items (Waterbase_WQ_v6_large_item, 7 records)

Basic information on large items - major water users (big cities, large industries, large agricultural units) - used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring (describing the volume of freshwater used per item). Actual measurements of water used in cities, industries, agricultural units in various temporal scales may be stored in table WQ-time_series.

RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
LIcategory	Category of the large item.		text(20)
LIclass	Class of the large item.	1: The item belongs to Class 1, the class grouping the largest abstraction sites, together representing 50 to 70% of the activity (as a rule of thumb for domestic use, class 1 should be made of those agglomerations that together host in the range of 50% - 70% of total population per district); 2: The item belongs to Class 2, the intermediate class; 3: The item belongs to Class 3, the class of smallest abstraction sites, representing 60 to 80% in number (or more) and in the range of 5 to 15% in cumulated activity.	long

Characteristics of Areas (Waterbase_WQ_v6_areas, 99 records)

Basic information on areas - country, river basin district, sub-unit, NUTS - used in the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring (reporting measurements i.e. water use, water balance or water abstraction). Actual measurements are stored in table WQ-time_series.

RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
AreaType	Type of the area.	C - Country NUTS - Level 1, 2 or 3 of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics RBDD - River basin District SU - Sub-unit	text(4)
WU_LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water use variables.		long
WU_LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water use variables.		long
WB_LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water balance variables.		long
WB_LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water balance variables.		long
WB_Returned_Unit	The hydrological unit to which the "returned after use" effluent is discharged (if it is different than the one where the water was originally abstracted).		text(255)
WB_Reused_Unit	The hydrological unit to which the reused water is made available (if it is different than the one where the water was originally abstracted).		text(255)
WB_Imports_Origin	The hydrological unit from which the water imports come.		text(255)
WB_Exports_Destination	The hydrological unit to which the exported water goes.		text(255)
WB_Artif_GW_Origin	Information on where artificial groundwater recharge originates from.		text(20)
WA_LTAA_year_from	Starting year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water abstraction variables.		long
WA_LTAA_year_to	Ending year of reference period used to calculate long term annual average (LTAA) for water abstraction variables.		long
QA_ALRviolations	Quality assessment field - list of areal logical rules violations.	List of codes of areal logical rules violated by Water quantity record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	memo
QA_station_issues	Quality assessment field - stations data quality issues flag	List of codes of Gentity specific data issues detected in the record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)

Water Abstraction Sources (Waterbase_WQ_v6_water_abstraction_sources, 18 records)

Table contains list of non-freshwater abstraction sources per sector and area.

RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of geographical entity that uniquely identifies the area (see WQ-Area table).		text(50)
SectorCode	Code of sector for which water is abstracted.		text(50)
WaterSource	The main water source type for the specific sector and area (region).		text(20)

Water Quantity Time Series (Waterbase_WQ_v6_time_series, 290634 records)

Table contains time series data for all measured variables of the WISE-SoE Water quantity monitoring. Time series are related to exactly one geographical entity, which is a station, a reservoir, another point entity or an area (region) e.g. a river basin district.

RecordID	Unique record identifier		long
RecordReported	Date when the records was reported by the data provider.		text(10)
CountryCode	Abbreviation of EEA Member or Collaborating Country	ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 code elements	text(2)
GEntityCode	Code of the geographical entity to which the data is directly related. If it is a station this field gives the code of the station. If it is a region it gives the code of the region. For most regional categories e.g. Country, RBD, NUTS the codes are defined on the European level. For stations the codes are given by the member states.		text(50)
Year	Year of aggregation period in which samples were taken/Year in which sample was taken.		long
TimeStep	A fixed time step for the time series.		text(8)
Index	The index of the time series value within the given reporting year.	Annual time series have always index = 1. The range of other time series are as follows: seasonal: 1 (wet season) - 2 (dry season); monthly: 1-12 (starting with January i.e. calendar year, not hydrological year); daily: 1-365 or 366 (depending of the year, starting with January 1st).	long
VariableCode	The name or code of the measured variable.		text(100)
Unit	The unit of the measurement for the time series.		text(4)
Value	The measured value of the variable.		decimal
QA_LRviolations	Quality assessment field - list of logical rules violations.	List of codes of logical rules violated by record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	text(100)
QA_ALRviolations	Quality assessment field - list of areal logical rules violations.	List of codes of areal logical rules violated by Water quantity record. Details are explained in the QA documentation.	memo

Waterbase-Water Quantity (Microsoft Access database file) (ZIP archive)
2.71 MB Download file
Waterbase-Water quantity (CSV files) (ZIP archive)
2.26 MB Download file

Additional information

Tables metadata

Definition and field description of the data table.

Table definitions (XLS file) (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet)
32.00 KB Download file
Table definitions (CSV file) (ZIP archive)
7.82 KB Download file

Code lists

Lists and description of codes of fields present in the water quantity data tables

Code lists (XLS file) (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet)
81.00 KB Download file
Code lists (CSV files) (ZIP archive)
8.63 KB Download file

QA documentation

Quality control documentation briefly presents ETC-ICM and EEA activities focused on quality of Waterbase-Water Quantity dataset and results of these activities.

QA documentation (PDF file) (PDF document)
94.15 KB Download file

Metadata

Reporting obligations (ROD)

WISE SoE - Water Quantity (WISE-3)

Rights:

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 (https://www.eea.europa.eu/legal/copyright). Copyright holder: European Environment Agency (EEA).

Disclaimer:

Data in Waterbase are sub-samples of national data assembled for the purpose of providing comparable indicators of pressures, state and impact of waters on a Europe-wide scale and the data sets are not intended for assessing compliance with any European Directive or any other legal instrument. Information on the national and sub-national scales should be sought from other sources.

Methodology:

Central to the Water Quantity database concept is the GEntity. A GEntity is short for geographical entity and can be a) a point, typically a station e.g. measuring precipitation or streamflow or b) an area e.g. a River Basin District or a Country. Other possible types of geographical entities such as lines or networks do not apply to the water quantity database.

All data stored in the database are directly or indirectly related with one gentity. Most of the reported water quantity data are stored in form of time series, which in return are related to GEntities.

Data sources

The European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters. Version 6, date of delivery (date sent to the Data Service): 27/02/2011

Owners:

European Environment Agency (EEA)

Processors:

European Topic Centre on Inland, Coastal and Marine waters (ETC/ICM)

Additional information

Waterbase contains timely, reliable and policy-relevant data collected from EEA member countries through the WISE-SoE data collection (formerly known as Eionet-Water and Eurowaternet) process. WISE-SoE data collection selects validated monitoring data from national databases and adds information on the physical characteristics of the water bodies being monitored and on the pressures potentially affecting water quality. The added value of Waterbase is that data collected through the WISE-SoE data collection process are from statistically stratified monitoring stations and groundwater bodies and are comparable at the European level. Waterbase data are primarily used in the production of the EEAs indicator-based factsheets.

Water quantity database is published again, after 3 years long break. In 2007 the old dataset structure was abandoned and development of new structure and new system for collecting data have started. First data collection test was run in 2008. In 2009 a new reporting system was established and used by country reporters in another data collection test which has provided data for previous version. This version is a result of the 2010 data collection, which is expected to be added to the set of the stable priority data flows in 2011.

Permalinks

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Older versions

11 Jun 2010 - Waterbase - Water Quantity

17 May 2006 - Waterbase - Water Quantity

21 Jun 2005 - Waterbase - Water Quantity

01 Jan 2002 - Waterbase - Water Quantity

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