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What data are collected? What stations are of interest?

GRDC aims to maintain and update a reliable collection of data on river discharge that comprehensively represents the runoff situation on a global scale. In principle, GRDC stores only data that have been verified and released by the owner of the original data, e.g. national or regional services that collect these data centrally in their territories. Data offered from other sources are accepted, provided that the owners authorised their use and further distribution.

The main focus is on the update and extension of the set of station and discharge data currently represented in the Global Runoff Database. Of particular interest are:

  1. Historical data:

    • daily or monthly values of river discharge (daily mean)
    • quality checked by the national or regional hydrological services
    • temporal extent as long as possible, ideally covering the 30-year CLINO periods stated by WMO (1951-1980, 1961-1990, 1971-2000)

  2. Near-real time data (NRT data):

    • discharge data in near-real time in high temporal resolution (preferably at least hourly)
    • gauging stations equipped with automated transmission facility
    • directly measured discharge values, or calculated from measured water-level data using a valid stage-discharge relation

  3. Information on how the data were collected, processed, and transferred (metadata):

    • dataset identification (identification, content, history, and references)
    • data extent (geographic, vertical and temporal)
    • conditions of data distribution (contacts, maintenance, transfer, access, and use)
    • quality of the data (origin/lineage, processing, validity)

Please consider the GRDC Station Selection Criteria (see right margin) as general guideline. These criteria capture the majority of the user requests addressed to GRDC. All data which meet at least some of the criteria are of interest. Please let us know your data source and possibly the owner of the data.

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