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The Water Research Observatory (WRO) is a cloud-based data portal developed and maintained by South Africa's Water Research Commission (WRC). It serves as a central hub for water-related data, research outputs, and monitoring information, bringing together datasets from across the water sector to support big data analytics, evidence-based decision making, and the sustainable management of South Africa's water resources.
The WRO provides access to a wide range of thematic data resources covering topics such as hydrology, water quality, groundwater, climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, flooding, drought, and more. It also supports a growing Catchment Water Information System, currently piloted for the Crocodile (West) River catchment, which integrates real-time and historical data at the catchment scale.
Users are encouraged to register on the WRO data platform to discover, upload, and share water-related datasets. A User Guide is available for download. Please review our Terms and Conditions before uploading data.
How to Use This Site
The WRO is organised around three main areas:
Browse Data & Resources — use the Data and Resources menu to explore thematic pages covering topics ranging from hydrology and groundwater to biodiversity, flooding, and water quality. Each page provides curated links to relevant datasets, tools, and reference material.
Discover Data — visit the Discover Data platform to search and explore water-related datasets uploaded by WRC and its partners. You will need to register for a free account to access the full functionality of the data platform.
Upload Data — registered users are encouraged to contribute their own water-related datasets to the WRO via the Upload Data portal, helping to grow a shared national water data resource. Please review our Terms and Conditions before uploading.
A full User Guide is available for download if you need further assistance navigating the platform.
For various sources of weather data, please see our Climate and Weather page
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