Germany Federal Waterway Monitoring Dataset

What this looks like

One real series from the dataset, and real rows from the head of its published extract. Neither is a mock-up: the rows below are the same rows, unchanged, that are in the file you would download.

River level at Kachlet Wehr Up

The longest single series this dataset holds — 65 daily values, one of 832. The dataset is not this chart.

Drawn to show the shape and resolution of what the dataset contains, not to make a point about Kachlet Wehr Up. Gaps are breaks, never interpolated.

View the data behind this chart

Underlying data
Period	Kachlet Wehr Up (m)
2026	0.535

Sample rows

12 of 52,842 rows Taken from the start of observations-river-flow-de-pegelonline.csv. These are sample rows, not the dataset.

Sample rows from the Germany Federal Waterway Monitoring Dataset extract
`metric_id`	`subject_id`	`subject_kind`	`value`	`censored`	`censor_operator`	`censor_threshold`	`censor_limit`	`censor_reported`	`unit`	`period_start`	`period_end`	`period_kind`	`basis`	`confidence`	`source_id`	`source_ref`	`qualifier`	`superseded`	`retrieved`
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.674235	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-07-27	2026-07-27	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.75375	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-07-28	2026-07-28	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.596619	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-07-29	2026-07-29	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.516014	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-07-30	2026-07-30	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.31375	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-07-31	2026-07-31	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.371901	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-01	2026-08-01	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.170833	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-04	2026-08-04	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.06	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-05	2026-08-05	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.308681	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-06	2026-08-06	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.461667	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-07	2026-08-07	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.478333	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-08	2026-08-08	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01
river-flow-mean	de-pegel-0370	geography	2.206573	—	—	—	—	—	m³/s	2026-08-09	2026-08-09	day	aggregated	high	de-pegelonline	0370	—	—	2026-10-01

Download these rows as CSV — the same twelve, with the column header, for testing a loader before committing to the full file.

Methodology

Collected from the PEGELONLINE REST service operated by the German Waterways and Shipping Administration. Gauges measure every fifteen minutes; Hydrionis stores the daily mean and refuses any day with fewer than 72 of the expected 96 readings rather than averaging a partial day. Water level is converted from centimetres to metres and remains referenced to each station’s own zero point, not to a national datum. The service returns roughly thirty-one days of measurement however much history is requested, so this dataset is built under the accumulate update mode: each collection run adds its window to with what is already held, and the record deepens prospectively rather than sliding forward.

What this dataset cannot tell you

Read before relying on these figures

This is not a historical archive and does not claim to be one. PEGELONLINE keeps about a month of measurement and discards the rest, so Hydrionis began with roughly one month per gauge. The record grows with each collection run rather than reaching backwards, and the earliest date held is the date Hydrionis first read the service — not the date the gauge was installed.
Water level is measured against each station’s own Pegelnullpunkt, a local reference. Two gauges reading three metres are not at the same height, and a level is not a depth of water. Read a level against that gauge’s own record and never against another gauge’s.
The network covers federal waterways only — navigable rivers and canals managed by the Waterways and Shipping Administration. The Länder operate much larger hydrological networks with far deeper records; the Bavarian service alone reaches back decades. Those are registered and not collected because their bulk download requires accepting terms through a form.
Coastal and estuarine stations on the North Sea and Baltic are tide gauges. A daily mean at one of those is a mean across tidal cycles, not a river stage.

Coverage

Subjects	German federal waterway gauges reporting level or discharge — 745 held
Period	2026–2026
Units	m, m³/s
Update cadence	Daily
Identifier	`germany-river-monitoring` 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-level`	River level Height of the water surface at a gauging station, measured against that station’s own zero point.	m	river-gauge
`river-flow-mean`	Mean river flow Average volumetric discharge past a gauging station over a stated period.	m³/s	river-gauge

Rights and access

Licence position

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

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

Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes — PEGELONLINE — German federal waterway gauges (Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero – Version 2.0 (DL-DE→Zero-2.0))

Attribution and citation

Cite and reuse →

Two different obligations, deliberately kept apart. One is a condition of somebody else's licence; the other is a request Hydrionis has no standing to enforce.

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), Germany Federal Waterway Monitoring Dataset, version 1.0.0, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/data/datasets/germany-river-monitoring/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on the compilation, the normalisation, the eligibility judgements or a chart. Where you use an unmodified published value, the publisher’s attribution is the one that is required; crediting Hydrionis as well is welcome and is not something Hydrionis can require of you.

Recommended, not required. Hydrionis does not claim rights over unmodified public data it relayed, and doing arithmetic on somebody else’s measurements does not make them Hydrionis’s. Cite the version and the access date: Germany Federal Waterway Monitoring Dataset changes as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without both cannot be checked later. Full guidance is on cite and reuse.

None of the contributing licences requires attribution. Crediting the publishers is still good practice and they are listed above.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-25

First release. Germany becomes a monitored jurisdiction.

Additions

Daily mean water level and discharge for the federal waterway network.

Use this data

Download river-flow observations from PEGELONLINE (WSV) (52,842 rows) (CSV)
Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/datasets/germany-river-monitoring.json
How to cite this, and who you must credit
How these figures were produced
Request this at a different scale, format or geography

Every bulk extract ships with a companion metadata file carrying this dataset’s version, its sources, their licences, the attribution you are required to give and the suggested citation — so the terms travel with the file rather than staying on this page.

About this data

The fields a professional user needs to judge whether this is fit for a particular purpose. Deliberately not a score.

About this data

Everything below is a property of the data rather than a rating of it. There is deliberately no single confidence score: how much a gap matters depends on what you are about to do with the series, and only you know that.

Source	Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes — PEGELONLINE — German federal waterway gauges · Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero – Version 2.0 (DL-DE→Zero-2.0)
How the values came to exist	Mixed across the series — the basis is recorded on every individual value.
Period held	2026–2026
Known gaps	This is not a historical archive and does not claim to be one. PEGELONLINE keeps about a month of measurement and discards the rest, so Hydrionis began with roughly one month per gauge. The record grows with each collection run rather than reaching backwards, and the earliest date held is the date Hydrionis first read the service — not the date the gauge was installed. Water level is measured against each station’s own Pegelnullpunkt, a local reference. Two gauges reading three metres are not at the same height, and a level is not a depth of water. Read a level against that gauge’s own record and never against another gauge’s. The network covers federal waterways only — navigable rivers and canals managed by the Waterways and Shipping Administration. The Länder operate much larger hydrological networks with far deeper records; the Bavarian service alone reaches back decades. Those are registered and not collected because their bulk download requires accepting terms through a form.
Continuity	Version 1.0.0, released 2026-08-25. 1 recorded version; breaking changes and corrections are listed in the changelog above.
Last read from the publisher	2026-10-01 · publisher updates daily
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced