As part of its core activities and commitment to advance global water data accessibility and hydrological research by bridging data gaps, the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (ICWRGC) hosts two global data centres, GWDC and ISMN. ICWRGC is pleased to announce significant updates from these data centres in 2025.
GWDC
GWDC hosts the Global Freshwater Quality database GEMStat for the UN Environment Programme. Data in GEMStat is provided by national and regional administration responsible for water quality monitoring. As of January 2026, GEMStat holds 61.4 million measurements from over 31,000 stations in 91 countries. 659 different water parameters are covered.
In 2025, over 30 million new measurements from 17,442 stations were added from:
- Chile
- European Union (all member states through EEA)
- Germany (separate to the EEA submission)
- Japan
- Republic of Korea
- Russia
The update for the European Union involved revising all available data due to technical issues, but also included a significant number of new stations and measurements.
Worldmap showing stations for which GEMStat and ISMN received updates in 2025.
ISMN
ISMN continues to serve as a key global reference database for in situ soil moisture observations. Through close collaboration with numerous international scientific networks and institutions, ISMN ensures the reliable collection, access to, and dissemination of high-quality soil moisture data worldwide.
Through these global partnerships, the ISMN currently hosts data from around 3,300 stations spanning over more than 60 countries. In 2025, the network integrated about 77 million new measurements from 1,100 stations into its database.
These updates included contributions from the following data providers:
- United States of America – ARM, CW3E, iRON, SCAN, SNOTEL, SOILSCAPE, STEMS, USCRN
- Central Asia – ROMPS
- Austria – WEGENERNET
- Germany – Berlin, BFG_Nw, DWD, TERENO, BDF_Saxony
- Greece – WATERLINE
- Spain – XMS-CAT, REMEDHUS
- France – SMOSMANIA, FR_Aqu
- Finland – FMI
- Italy – LABFLUX
- Romania – RSMN
GRDC
The Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) is hosted at BfG, without being directly affiliated with ICWRGC. Information on data updates in 2025 is available on the GRDC homepage.
ICWRGC supports advancement of FAIR data
These developments reflect ICWRGC’s mission to support scientific research, water management, and climate resilience by ensuring that top grade water quality and soil moisture data is freely accessible to stakeholders worldwide through GWDC and ISMN, while actively promoting the application of FAIR data principles. We look forward to a continued collaboration and further enhancements in global water data accessibility.
