STARS4Waters supports adaptive, resilient, and sustainable freshwater management by improving how climate and water-related data are accessed and used in planning. Among the project goals is to unlock and enhance existing global datasets, develop new indicators, and deliver decision-relevant data services that help river basin authorities understand and respond to climate change impacts on water availability. For that purpose, we focused on developing climate risk and water resources indicators across the seven River Basin Hubs (RHBs). A three-tiered approach was applied:
Tier-1 indicators were derived directly from global datasets (e.g. Copernicus Climate Data Store) and include variables such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, groundwater recharge, river discharge, snow water equivalent, population, and land use—aggregated at sub-catchment scale.
Tier-2 indicators are more tailored to water management and were developed by combining global and local datasets to produce management-relevant metrics; these included indicators for domestic, industrial and irrigation water demand, high and low river flows, precipitation deficits, and ecological flow risks using the ERFA methodology.
Tier-3 indicators, currently under development, will use hydrological modeling and machine learning techniques to deliver high-resolution, basin-specific metrics.
Key findings of the analysis show a consistent increase in water demand across all basins—driven by population growth and economic development—as well as rising irrigation needs, particularly in the Rhine and Douro basins. Several basins are projected to face reduced groundwater recharge and increased evapotranspiration. Climate projections suggest rising precipitation deficits in catchments like the Seine, East Anglia, and Danube. The ecological flow analysis indicated that most sites are already at medium risk, with high flow, monthly flow, and low flow alterations posing the greatest threats to ecosystem integrity. Overall, the indicators reveal growing pressures on water resources, highlighting the urgency for integrated, data-driven planning. While stakeholders acknowledged the utility of global data as a starting point, particularly in data-scarce contexts, they emphasized the importance of complementing it with local data for greater accuracy. Ongoing work will refine datasets and support modeling in subsequent project phases.
To support uptake, we developed an interactive web-based STARS4Water Dashboard which visualizes both Tier-1 and Tier-2 indicators at the basin level. The dashboard allows users, including basin managers and planners, to explore projected trends, compare scenarios, and download data. It was tested and refined through stakeholder workshops, and feedback confirmed its usefulness as a starting point for basin-level dialogue and scenario exploration, especially in areas with limited local data availability.
All newly derived data has been uploaded to Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/12657331) and the metadata concerning the datasets is captured in the STARS4Water Metadata Portal (S4W climate indicators t1).
More information can be found in the following STARS4Water project Deliverable:
Beckers, J., M. Grady, C. Laize and S. Szporak-Wasilewska (2025): Next generation water resources data services. Horizon Europe project STARS4Water. Deliverable D2.6.
