Request data | Hydrionis

Send an enquiry

The quick way

That opens your own mail client with the structure below already in the body, addressed to hello@hekno.co.uk. Fill in what applies and delete what does not. Nothing is submitted to Hydrionis or to anyone else until you send it yourself, and you can see exactly what you are sending — which is more than most web forms offer.

There is deliberately no form here. Hydrionis is served as static files with no application behind them, so a form would have to route your organisation’s name, your email and a description of your requirement through a third-party processor. For the volume of enquiries this receives, that is a lot of other people’s infrastructure handling your data for no benefit to you.

If that link does nothing on your machine

Some browsers and most locked-down work machines have no mail client registered. Email hello@hekno.co.uk directly and paste this:

Organisation:

Your name:

Email:

What are you trying to answer?:

Dataset or topic:

Geography:

Period and history needed:

Resolution:

Delivery preference:

Intended use:

Approximate volume:

Is it recurring?:

Hydrionis does not currently show what I need:

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Hydrionis will check coverage, freshness, rights and the appropriate delivery
route before replying. Leave anything blank that does not apply.

What to tell us, and why each one matters

Every field exists because without it the answer is a guess. Leave anything blank that does not apply — an enquiry with four of these answered is far more useful than none at all.

What	Why it is asked	Needed
Organisation Consultancy, university, utility, newsroom, investor, public body, or none	Rights differ by who is asking. Several publishers distinguish research from commercial use, and the answer to "may I redistribute this" can depend on it.	to answer properly
Your name	So a reply is addressed to someone.	to reply at all
Email	The only way an answer reaches you.	to reply at all
What are you trying to answer? e.g. "has river flow at our abstraction point declined over thirty years?" rather than "send me river flow data"	The most useful field on this list, and the one most often left out. A question can frequently be answered with data Hydrionis already publishes, or answered better with a different series than the one asked for. A request for a specific file cannot be improved on; a question can.	to answer properly
Dataset or topic A dataset name, a metric, or just the domain — rainfall, river flow, groundwater, reservoirs, drought, water quality, abstraction	Where you already know which of the published datasets you want.	helpful
Geography Countries, regions, catchments, a list of sites, or coordinates	The first thing that decides whether Hydrionis holds anything at all. Coverage is deep in some places and absent in others, and being specific gets a straight answer faster.	to answer properly
Period and history needed e.g. "1990 to present" or "as long a baseline as exists"	A thirty-year baseline and a current reading are different requests met by different sources. Some of what Hydrionis holds starts in the 1830s and some starts in 2000.	to answer properly
Resolution Sub-daily, daily, monthly, annual, or whatever is finest	Whether what is held is usable for your question. Daily, monthly and annual records answer different things, and coarsening is possible while refining is not.	to answer properly
Delivery preference CSV, JSON, API, database load, a written analysis, or no preference	Decides whether this is an existing file, a bespoke extract, an API route or a piece of analysis.	helpful
Intended use Internal analysis, academic research, journalism, a client-facing report, a commercial product, a public dashboard	Frequently the whole answer. A value Hydrionis may display and you may cite is not necessarily one either of us may redistribute inside a deliverable, and establishing that first saves everyone the work.	to answer properly
Approximate volume A handful of series, a few hundred, or everything for a country	Distinguishes a file from a feed, which are different pieces of work. A handful of series is an extract somebody can send you this week; everything for a country is a delivery route that has to be built, and it is better to know which of those you are asking for before either of us starts.	helpful
Is it recurring? One-off, occasional, or a regular refresh	A one-off extract and a standing feed are different commitments, and the second depends on collection cadence Hydrionis can actually promise.	helpful
Hydrionis does not currently show what I need What is missing, and where you believe it is published	The single most valuable thing you can tell us. A gap somebody has asked for is prioritised over one nobody has. If you know a source that would close it, name it.	helpful

What happens next

Published so that a reply is not a black box. These four checks are what a Hydrionis answer is actually made of, and they are run against the recorded registry rather than from memory.

Coverage

Whether the geography, period and resolution you need are actually held — and if not, whether they exist anywhere Hydrionis can lawfully reach.

Freshness

When the relevant series were last read from their publishers, and how often those publishers update. Some of what Hydrionis holds is a historical record and cannot support a current-conditions question, and you will be told which.

Rights

What the contributing publishers permit for your specific intended use — display, derivation, redistribution, commercial reuse — and what attribution passes to you. This is checked against the recorded rights for each source rather than answered in general terms.

The right delivery route

Whether this is something already published that you can take now, a bespoke extract, an API route, or a question better answered by analysis than by a file.

You will get one of four answers: it is already published and here is the link; it is held and here is the extract; it is held and cannot be redistributed for your intended use, and here is the source to go to directly; or it is not held, and here is what would have to exist for it to be.

Before you ask, it may already be here

A good proportion of enquiries are answered by something already published, and finding it yourself is faster than waiting for a reply.

44 governed datasets

Each with its coverage computed from the data, its methodology, its licence position and a download where the rights permit one.

The JSON API

Flat files per metric, per subject and per dataset. Often the fastest answer to “can I get this programmatically”.

Coverage and gaps

What is held and what is not, per country and per metric — including the gaps Hydrionis knows about and what would close each one.

Corrections

Corrections are the most useful thing anyone sends, and they go to the same address. If a figure here is wrong, or a licence has been recorded incorrectly, it will be checked, fixed and dated — and the previous value retained rather than quietly overwritten. What Hydrionis does with an error once it knows about one is on accuracy and corrections.

Pricing

There is none to quote yet, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. The public data layer is free and stays free. Bespoke extracts, recurring feeds, analysis and commercial licensing support are all things Hydrionis can do and will price against the actual work when there is a specific requirement to price — which is what this enquiry route is for. What exists now and what does not is set out on Hydrionis Professional.