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Seasonal water scarcity conditions across Europe, measured using the water exploitation index plus (WEI+) for sub river basins, 2015

Figure Created 28 Mar 2022 Published 28 Mar 2022 Last modified 28 Mar 2022
1 min read
This map illustrates water stress conditions across Europe, where water use is displayed as a percentage of total water available.

European data

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

External Data Spec E-OBS gridded dataset E-OBS gridded version of the ECA dataset (netCDF) with daily temperature, precipitation and pressure fields The ECA dataset contains series of daily observations at meteorological stations throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Temperature data from E-OBS (KNMI) the ENSEMBLE FP6 project    
Data Waterbase - Water Quantity 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, on the quantity of Europe's water resources, and on the emissions to surface waters from point and diffuse sources of pollution.
Data Waterbase - UWWTD: Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive – reported data Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive concerns the collection, treatment and discharge of urban waste water and the treatment and discharge of waste water from certain industrial sectors. The objective of the Directive is to protect the environment from the adverse effects of the above mentioned waste water discharges.
External Data Spec LISFLOOD. Distributed Water Balance and Flood Simulation Model (Dataset URL is not available)
Data European catchments and Rivers network system (Ecrins) Version 1, Jun. 2012 - Ecrins is acronym for European catchments and Rivers network system. It is a geographical information system of the European hydrographical systems with a full topological information. Ecrins is a composite system made from the CCM developed by the JRC, Corine land Cover, WFD reporting elements, etc. It is organised from a layer of 181,071 “functional elementary catchments (FECs)” which average size is ~62 km2, fully connected with explicit identifier (ID) relationships and upstream area. Catchments are grouped as sub-basins, river basin districts (actual and functional to meet hydrographical continuity). The catchments are as well organised according to their sea shore of emptying to meet Marine Strategy delineations. Catchments are drained by 1,348,163 river segments, sorted as “main drains” (connecting together the FECs) and secondary drains (internal to a FEC). river segments mimic the natural drainage, however fulfilling the topological constraint of “0,1 or 2 upstreams, single or 0 downstream”. Each segment is populated with distance to the sea, to ease further processing. They are connected to elementary catchments and nodes documented with altitude. Segments are as well documented with a “dummy river code”, fully populated that earmark each segment with the most distant to the outlet in each drainage basin and, everywhere this has been possible, with a “true river” ID based on river naming. A layer of lakes and dams has been elaborated. Lakes polygons (70,847) are taken from Corine Land cover , WFD Art. 13 and in some cases, from CCM “water layer”. Lakes inlets and outlets are set with the segment ID and where relevant, the dams making the lake is documented. All lakes which depths and volume was found have been updated. Version 1.0 here presented still contain some topological errors (e.g. incorrect segment branching), because inaccurate geometry. They are noted and a correction procedure is underway.

Interactive maps

GIS Map Application Water exploitation index plus (WEI+) for river basin districts (1990-2015) This interactive map gives a European overview of water stress conditions. The information presented may deviate from that available in the EEA member countries and cooperating countries, particularly for those countries where data availability is insufficient in the WISE SoE - Water quantity database (WISE 3). Data on hydro-climatic variables were aggregated from a daily to a monthly scale. Water abstraction data were taken from WISE 3 (annual resolution at the national scale), although there are large gaps in the time series. Therefore, intensive gap filling was performed on water abstraction data and proxies were used to disaggregate the data from the national to the sub-basin scale. Information on water use was mainly modelled on the UWWTP capacities, the E-PRTR database and the Eurostat Population change dataset (online data code [demo_gind]) among others. See the methodology chapter for further explanation of gap filling, and spatial and temporal disaggregation, and the data uncertainties chapter for current data availability. This interactive map allows users to explore changes over time in water abstraction by source, water use by sector and water stress level at sub-basin or river basin scale. The WEI+ has been estimated as the quarterly average per river basin district for the years 1990-2015, as defined in the European catchments and rivers network system (ECRINS). The ECRINS delineation of river basin districts differs slightly from that defined by Member States under the Water Framework Directive. The Ecrins delineation is used instead of the WFD because it contains geospatial information on Europe’s hydrographical systems with full topological information enabling flow estimation between upstream and downstream basins, as well as integration of economic data collected at NUTS or country level. In addition to using the WISE SoE - Water quantity database, comprehensive manual data collection was performed by accessing all open sources (Eurostat, OECD, FAO), including national statistical offices of the countries. This was done because of the temporal and spatial gaps in the data on water abstraction. Moreover, a large part of the stream flow data from LISFLOOD has also been substantially updated by the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre. Similarly, a comprehensive update with climatic parameters has been performed by the EEA based on the E-OBS dataset. Therefore, the time series of the WEI+ presented in the current version might be slightly different for some basins compared with the previous version.

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For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/seasonal-water-exploitation-index-plus-3 or scan the QR code.

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