Station Selection Criteria
Summary, for detailed explanation see the adjacent Information note on GRDC station selection criteria, data format and transfer.
The guiding criteria for the selection of a station for provision to the GRDC (only a few are sufficient to select a station) are:
- stations at rivers which reflect best the hydrological regime of a region or part of a country
- stations at rivers which are economically important in terms of population density and/or agro-based or industrial production
- last downstream stations at rivers which drain into the oceans or have an internal drainage
stations with annual average discharge
- greater than around 100 cbm/s
- among the 10-50 highest in a region or country
stations with basin sizes
- greater than around 25.000 sqkm, if next station to the sea
- greater than around 50.000 - 100.000 sq km
- among the 10-50 largest in a region or country
- stations at rivers where the basin population is greater than 1.000.000 inhabitants
- stations of rivers in pristine basin (often very small ones)
- stations with long records, i.e. longer than 30-40 years, ideally covering the WMO periods 1931-60 and 1961-90.
- stations with up-to-date information (1990-now)
- stations which provide Near-Real-Time (NRT) access to current data, preferably via internet