To improve the understanding of water resources availability and water use in river basins the STARS4Water project is unlocking global and European data sources by creating easy access to these data sources through the STARS4Water Metadata Portal, which was officially launched in September 2023. The Metadata Portal is a flexible and modular environment easily adaptable to the different needs of the river basin organisations.

The 3^rd release of the Metadata Portal has now been achieved. The current version contains 460 datasets on a wide range of topics relevant for water resources assessments. Since the previous release (in September 2024) we have added:

• Datasets that were generated by the STARS4Water project, such as the WP2 tier1 climate risk indicators. These are scenarios for climate and socio-economic data for each river basin or subcatchment, derived from existing Copernicus data.  
• Metadata that were collected by the STARS4Water ‘sister project’ SOS-Water. SOS-Water made a similar inventory of global data that are relevant to water resources management. The results of that inventory were shared with the STARS4Water project team and several datasets have been added to the Metadata Portal.

The procedure for uploading metadata to the portal has been formalized. Zenodo has been selected as the default DOI-provider for datasets that are generated and published by the STARS4Water project (visit the STARS4Water Community on Zenodo).

The current platform is based on the Geonetwork catalog application. It is planned that the platform will be migrated to the new STAC (Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalogs) environment in the upcoming months. The fourth and final release of the Metadata Portal is scheduled for September 2026.  

To access the STARS4Water Metadata Portal please visit: Stars4Water (stars4water.openearth.nl)

More information can be found in the following STARS4Water project Deliverable:J. Beckers, Schotmeijer, G.J., & G. Hendriksen (2025): Third release of the STARS4Water Metadata Portal. Horizon Europe project STARS4Water. Deliverable D2.7.