Making China’s water data accessible, usable and shareable

Water data are essential for monitoring, managing, modelling and projecting water resources. Yet despite such data—including water quantity, quality, demand and ecology—being extensively collected in China, it remains difficult to access, use and share them. These challenges have led to poor data qu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature water 2023-04, Vol.1 (4), p.328-335
Main Authors: Lin, Jingyu, Bryan, Brett A., Zhou, Xudong, Lin, Peirong, Do, Hong Xuan, Gao, Lei, Gu, Xinchen, Liu, Zhifeng, Wan, Luwen, Tong, Shanlin, Huang, Jiacong, Wang, Qian, Zhang, Yuan, Gao, Hongkai, Yin, Jiabo, Chen, Zilong, Duan, Weili, Xie, Zheyu, Cui, Tong, Liu, Junzhi, Li, Mingqian, Li, Xiaodong, Xu, Zhenwu, Guo, Fei, Shu, Lele, Li, Bin, Zhang, Jingwen, Zhang, Pingping, Fan, Bo, Wang, Yanwen, Zhang, Yifan, Huang, Jinliang, Li, Xin, Cai, Yanpeng, Yang, Zhifeng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
Data collection
Data management
Data quality
Decision making
Ecology
Floods
Governance
Government agencies
Infrastructure
Natural resources
Printed materials
Resource management
Water policy
Water quality
Water resources
Water resources management
Water supply
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Summary:Water data are essential for monitoring, managing, modelling and projecting water resources. Yet despite such data—including water quantity, quality, demand and ecology—being extensively collected in China, it remains difficult to access, use and share them. These challenges have led to poor data quality, duplication of effort and wasting of resources, limiting their utility for supporting decision-making in water resources policy and management. In this Perspective we discuss the current state of China’s water data collection, governance and sharing, the barriers to open-access water data and its impacts, and outline a path to establishing a national water data infrastructure to reform water resource management in China and support global water-data sharing initiatives.This Perspective characterizes the major challenges to open-access water data in China. A potential data management infrastructure to improve the collection, sharing, and use of water data is outlined.
ISSN:2731-6084
2731-6084
DOI:10.1038/s44221-023-00039-y