Hydrionis for technology and data centres
The water context behind siting and disclosure decisions: how much renewable water a country actually has, how contested it already is, and what the local hydrological record shows.
What you can answer here
What is the defensible water-stress figure for this location?
National water stress with its full definition, its source, its reporting year and its comparability constraints attached — the things a disclosure reviewer asks for.
Where it stops: Water stress is published nationally. Presenting a national figure as a site figure is the most common error in water disclosure, and Hydrionis will not do it for you.
What does the long-run local record show, rather than the national figure?
Where Hydrionis holds a monitoring record near a site — rainfall, river flow, groundwater level — it can show that record against its own history, with the completeness and the continuity breaks marked. That is a materially stronger basis for a siting or disclosure claim than a national indicator, and it exists for some geographies and not others.
Where it stops: Coverage is deep in the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the United States, and absent elsewhere. Where no local record is held, Hydrionis says so rather than substituting the national figure — which is the error this question exists to avoid.
How much water does a data centre actually use?
Hydrionis holds the sector context and the published reference material rather than facility-level consumption, which is very rarely disclosed.
Where it stops: Facility-level water use is not open data. Anyone offering it at scale is estimating, and Hydrionis does not publish estimates as observations.
Relevant datasets
| Dataset | Observations | Coverage | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global Water Resources and Withdrawal Dataset | 50,363 | 1961–2022 | Commercial use permitted |
Key measures
Full dictionary →| Measure | Definition | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Water stress | Freshwater withdrawal as a percentage of available renewable freshwater resources, after accounting for environmental flow requirements. | % |
| Renewable freshwater per person | Total renewable freshwater resources divided by population. | m³/person/yr |
| Industrial share of withdrawal | Percentage of total freshwater withdrawal used by industry, including energy cooling. | % |