You would think scientists and agencies would agree to work together to compile and accomplish this.  There have been some attempts to have a comprehensive resources data base such as was conducted by US Forest Service called the NRIS data base (Natural Resource Information System).  It is fairly comprehensive.  But in the USA, just about every agency, individual states, scientists and industry have their own data base systems.  Most are or could be public, except raw data collected seldom has a communal place to reside, and perhaps industries and others have proprietary data they want to retain for their own uses only.  The methods to obtain data are seldom fully standardized, and sometimes it goes back to basics such as using different definitions such as what are wetlands, what constitutes an ephemeral stream, etc.  And their are a variety of classification systems such as Cowardin et al, 1978 on Wetlands and Deep Water Habitats, Rosgen 1993 Stream Classification and Morphology and many others.  And the communications and interactions among other scientific efforts across individual countries as well as the world has improved with the internet, etc., but data bases designed to compile available information need more attention.  Even scientists and professionals likely do not know all available data on their subjects of interest. 

I find such data for Europe (low level of detail) (EU):

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/waterbase-rivers-10/#tab-european-data

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/waterbase-rivers-10/#tab-additional-information

http://dd.eionet.europa.eu/dataelements/latest/RBD-code

Now I am looking for more detailed information on the different countries and regions.

For example:

- United Kingdom:

https://data.gov.uk/dataset/river-water-quality-regions

- Alberta (Canada):

http://open.alberta.ca/dataset/river-water-quality-index-alberta/resource/04e74ee0-6719-4d58-bbb5-bb06646a05aa

Hello, take a look on this Website:

http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

In case of South Korea, rivers, reservoirs, lakes consist of GIS format such as shp files, and water depth, flow rate are DB format.

You can check it here http://wamis.go.kr/

Thanks.

Here are a few examples from the USA

National Water quality monitoring

https://www.epa.gov/waterdata/storage-and-retrieval-and-water-quality-exchange

http://water.usgs.gov/owq/data.html

http://www.fws.gov/wetlands/

International

https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/access/

In the USA, and I may be a bit biased, but I believe the oldest and one of the broadest (with respect to surface and groundwater) water data systems is NWIS (National Water Information System). You can find a link to it here:

As noted above, there are many other excellent resources. As for a standard across political and scientific boundaries, that remains elusive, as everyone wants to be king of the data, as data and knowledge is power. I hope this helps as much as the other entries...Cheers, Bob

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis

Vitali,

As others' answers have indicated, there are many different kinds of data stored by many different organizations in many different formats. An important concept to keep in mind is interoperability, which to me means that a data user can access all of these data in a straightforward manner. This interoperability is being realized through implementation of web service-base access through open standards like those developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc) to realize the data management principles of the Group on Earth Observations (see http://is.gd/GEO10DMP or http://is.gd/GEODSWG).

There is a recent issue of AWRA's Water Resources Impact focused on the US Open Water Data Initiative, an effort to demonstrate and improve interoperability. The TOC is available at http://www.awra.org/impact/issues/1511imp_toc.pdf; an article I wrote for this issue that talks about data management principles is available at http://v.gd/Virtuous_Data_Management (look after the copy of the TOC). My contact information is included at the end of the article if you'd like to follow up directly.

Tad

http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc

http://is.gd/GEO10DMP

http://is.gd/GEODSWG

http://www.awra.org/impact/issues/1511imp_toc.pdf

http://v.gd/Virtuous_Data_Management

Vitali -

Re-reading your question, I realized you're interested in the spatial aspects of water - stream courses and catchment boundaries, not so much the quantity and quality of water. My answer above was focused more on the latter, though the Open Water Data Initiative also speaks to spatial extents and graphs. That being said, I'd still suggest that you look at what OGC provides in terms of interchange formats for spatial data. To a certain extent, the format/data model for storage doesn't matter as much as the format in which the data are accessible - unless you are charged with implementing an efficient scheme for storing (e.g.) a national database.

In the US, the National Hydrography Dataset and the Watershed Boundary Dataset (see http://nhd.usgs.gov/) are probably the best example.

Tad

Dear Tad Slawecki,  

  The water cadastre of country including all data (location and boundaries of water bodies, the quantity and quality of water, water usage etc.). I am interesting all data in open electronic formats.

Vitalii

Hi Vitalii,

Just a bit of additional material to complement what Tad added above; the National Hydrology Dataset (NHD) and the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD), are both vector datasets that will show you the rivers/streams, lakes, and glaciers (NHD) and the basins for those rivers/streams down to a hydrologic unit code (HUC) of 12, which is pretty small. Some areas, if I'm not mistaken, are even working on HUC16s, which is getting really small for basin delineation, but in some areas, it may be practical to make them that small (urban areas?). Neither of these datasets provides water quantity nor quality, but you can try StreamStats instead, if you don't want only data from USGS gage sites as delivered through NWIS. While not fully implemented for the entire USA, it is showing how the coupling of the NHD, WBD, and NWIS can begin to show how multiple datasets can be integrated and a potential wealth of calculated results using these three datasets for a gage, as well as modeled data for ungaged basins of one's choosing, based off of the regional regression equations for estimating flood flows. I'm sure the future will bring with it greater maturity and openness everywhere, but for now, you can even get data for ungaged basins (caveats included, of course) in certain areas. For example, I randomly picked a USGS gaging station, number 01548005, on Bald Eagle Creek near Beech Creek Station, Pa., and I am not from Pennsylvania, just to maintain a sense of fairness, ( http://streamstatsags.cr.usgs.gov/v3_beta/viewer.htm?stabbr=PA ), and received http://streamstatsags.cr.usgs.gov/gagepages/html/01548005.htm , a StreamStats Data-Collection Station Report, that contains a wealth of information about this gage and the upstream basin. Back on the map page, you can continue zooming in until you see the raster cells that make up the modeled stream network, basically a function of the DEM, and then click the new icon (you'll have to play with the map service...it's too much to explain in type), which is a circle with a "+" sign, at which point it will generate the basin for the gage, as well as a "Q" state that will compute flow statistics. The further you zoom in, the more options you will have. When you see gages (triangles), that's the place to start

Things are moving along. Some areas have more resources and better data than others. Most of this data, modeled and real, is downloadable. Sometimes it works better in some area than in others, but as you will see on the StreamStats home page, http://water.usgs.gov/osw/streamstats/ssonline.html , there are some holes where states have not begun the process, to states that are highly developed that have completed the process through one method or another. It is a constantly evolving organism at the moment, always looking for the best way to present both the gaged data and the modeled data. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to answer questions as possible or pass you on to someone further up the proverbial food chain. Time to get back to work...Cheers, Bob 

One more item, Vitalii,

If you have a chance, there is an abundance of open data, GIS included, in the ScienceBase-Catalog ( https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/ ). It includes publications, GIS, metadata (some better than others), etc. Hopefully this helps just a bit more. Cheers, Bob

Hi Vitali

I do know  the format used in Brazil.  but i guess we do not have a format with a clear semantic defined. I guess that the data are mainly stored in relational databases.

please check gov.data,br the open data portal of the brazilian government. If you need some help just ask

Regards

Sergio