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  • Perspective
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Making China’s water data accessible, usable and shareable

Nature Water volume 1, pages 328–335 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

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.

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Fig. 1: China’s water data survey results.
Fig. 2: Anticipating water data sharing challenges with PEACE.

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All Supplementary Materials are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21532908.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Hydro90 Research community in China for supporting this research. We thank Q. Tang, P. Yang, F. Li and Y. Xu for their constructive comments. This work was supported by the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams (grant number 2019ZT08L213), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 52200213, 52239005 and 42222104) and the Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (grant number 2020B1111380003).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jingyu Lin, Brett A. Bryan.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Quality Improvement and Ecological Restoration for Watersheds, School of Ecology, Environment and Resources, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Jingyu Lin, Yuan Zhang, Yanpeng Cai & Zhifeng Yang

  2. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Guangzhou, China

    Jingyu Lin, Yuan Zhang, Yanpeng Cai & Zhifeng Yang

  3. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia

    Jingyu Lin, Brett A. Bryan & Fei Guo

  4. Global Hydrological Prediction Center, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Xudong Zhou

  5. Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Peirong Lin

  6. International Research Center for Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing, China

    Peirong Lin

  7. Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Nong Lam University - Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Hong Xuan Do

  8. Center for Technology Business Incubation, Nong Lam University - Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Hong Xuan Do

  9. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Urrbrae, South Australia, Australia

    Lei Gao

  10. State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Simulation and Safety, School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Xinchen Gu

  11. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE) and School of Natural Resources, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Zhifeng Liu

  12. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Luwen Wan

  13. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Shanlin Tong & Jiabo Yin

  14. Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Jiacong Huang

  15. Institute of Water Science and Technology, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Qian Wang

  16. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education of China), East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Hongkai Gao

  17. College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Zilong Chen, Zheyu Xie & Jinliang Huang

  18. Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China

    Weili Duan

  19. Department of Hydraulic Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Tong Cui

  20. Center for the Pan-Third Pole Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Junzhi Liu

  21. Key Laboratory of Groundwater Resources and Environment, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Mingqian Li

  22. College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Xiaodong Li

  23. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhenwu Xu

  24. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhenwu Xu

  25. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China

    Fei Guo

  26. Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Lele Shu

  27. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Bin Li

  28. School of Civil Engineering, Center of Water Resources and Environment, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China

    Jingwen Zhang

  29. College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China

    Pingping Zhang

  30. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Bo Fan

  31. School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China

    Yanwen Wang

  32. College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China

    Yifan Zhang

  33. National Tibetan Plateau Data Center, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xin Li

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  1. Jingyu Lin
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Correspondence to Yanpeng Cai.

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Lin, J., Bryan, B.A., Zhou, X. et al. Making China’s water data accessible, usable and shareable. Nat Water 1, 328–335 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00039-y

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