France Water Abstraction Dataset

Methodology

Aggregated by Hydrionis from per-abstraction-point annual declarations in the Banque Nationale des Prélèvements en Eau. Only declarations the water agency recorded as an abstraction actually carried out are counted; points instructed but not abstracted from are excluded, so a licence is never counted as a withdrawal. Volumes are summed in cubic metres and stored in millions of cubic metres. The five purposes form a composition group and the total is the sum across all purposes including any not mapped to a named category.

What this dataset cannot tell you

Coverage

Subjects	French departments and France — 141 held
Period	1970–2024
Units	Mm³
Update cadence	Annually
Identifier	`france-water-abstraction` 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
`abstraction-volume-total`	Water abstracted, all purposes Total volume of water reported as actually abstracted from surface water and groundwater in a year, across all declared purposes.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin
`abstraction-volume-public-supply`	Water abstracted for public water supply Abstraction for treatment and distribution as drinking water through a public supply network.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin
`abstraction-volume-irrigation`	Water abstracted for irrigation and agriculture Abstraction for crop irrigation and other agricultural use.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin
`abstraction-volume-industry`	Water abstracted for industry Abstraction for industrial and economic activity other than irrigation and electricity generation.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin
`abstraction-volume-energy`	Water abstracted for electricity generation Abstraction for cooling and operation of electricity generating plant.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin
`abstraction-volume-canals`	Water abstracted for canals and navigation Abstraction to maintain water levels in canals and navigations.	Mm³	county, country, river-basin

Rights and access

Licence position

Open with attribution. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse true.

Attribution required:

Data from Eurostat, used under European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU).
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

Eurostat — Water statistics (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU))
Agences de l’eau / Office français de la biodiversité — Prélèvements en eau — abstraction database (Licence Ouverte / Open Licence v2.0 (Etalab))

Suggested citation

Hydrionis (2026), France Water Abstraction Dataset, version 1.0.0. Retrieved from https://hydrionis.com/data/datasets/france-water-abstraction/

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. Hydrionis holds abstraction observations for the first time.

Additions

Annual abstraction by purpose for French departments and France.

Getting the data

Machine-readable metadata for this dataset is at /api/v1/datasets/france-water-abstraction.json. For bulk extracts, higher-volume access or commercial licensing, see data enquiries.