France River Flow Dataset
Monthly mean river discharge for long-record sites on the French national hydrometric network, including records opening in the 1910s and 1920s. The first non-anglophone national hydrometric network Hydrionis holds.
Methodology
Taken from the Hub’Eau hydrometry service’s own elaborated monthly mean (QmM), which the French flood forecasting service computes from its validated sub-hourly record. Hydrionis does not recompute it from daily values: the publisher knows which of its readings passed validation and Hydrionis does not. Series are indexed by hydrometric *site* rather than station, so a record continues across each rebuild of the installation at that place. Discharge is published in litres per second and converted to cubic metres per second, with the publisher’s unit recorded on every series. Sites need thirty years of monthly record, and at most ten are taken from each department so that coverage follows French geography rather than the historical density of French gauging.
What this dataset cannot tell you
Coverage
| Subjects | French hydrometric sites with 30+ years of monthly record, capped at ten per department — 892 held |
|---|---|
| Period | 1900–2026 |
| Units | m³/s |
| Update cadence | Monthly |
| Identifier | france-river-flow v1.0.0 |
Fields
Data dictionary →Every metric this dataset carries, with the unit it is stored in and the geography level it is reported at. Full definitions are in the data dictionary.
| Identifier | Field | Unit | Reported at |
|---|---|---|---|
river-flow-monthly-mean | Mean monthly river flow | m³/s | river-gauge |
Rights and access
Licence position
Open with attribution. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse true.
Attribution required:
- Source: Hub’Eau / Système d’information sur l’eau, under Licence Ouverte (Etalab).
Permitted uses
- Public display
- Derived analysis
- API delivery
- Bulk download
- Commercial use
Available to: Public, Developer, Research, Professional, Enterprise. These follow from the rights of the contributing publishers, not from a Hydrionis pricing decision — no access tier can widen what a publisher withheld.
Contributing sources
Suggested citation
Hydrionis (2026), France River Flow Dataset, version 1.0.0. Retrieved from https://hydrionis.com/data/datasets/france-river-flow/
Cite the version. Hydrionis datasets change as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without a version cannot be checked later.
Changelog
Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-25
First release.
Additions
- Monthly mean flow for long-record sites across metropolitan and overseas France.
Getting the data
Machine-readable metadata for this dataset is at /api/v1/datasets/france-river-flow.json. For bulk extracts, higher-volume access or commercial licensing, see data enquiries.