Aqueduct

Water risks are an urgent global challenge. Most public health crises are already driven by water, including floods, droughts and water-borne diseases. Climate change is worsening the problem by intensifying floods and drought, shifting precipitation patterns, altering water supplies and accelerating glacial melt and sea level rise. Clean water supplies are vital for human health, industry, agriculture and energy production, making water risks a major humanitarian threat. Identifying, understanding and responding to these risks requires transparent, publicly available data.

Aqueduct’s tools use open-source, peer reviewed data to map water risks such as floods, droughts and stress. Beyond the tools, the Aqueduct team works one-on-one with companies, governments and research partners through the Aqueduct Alliance to help advance best practices in water resource management and enable sustainable growth in a water-constrained world.

The latest iteration of Aqueduct, Aqueduct 4.0, represents our most robust look at water risks to date, including more granular data, higher resolution, new indicators, improved tool function and access to underlying hydrological models.

Our Aqueduct tools include:

• Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, which maps and analyzes current and future water risks across locations;
• Aqueduct Country Rankings, which allows decision-makers to understand and compare national and subnational water risks;
• Aqueduct Food, which identifies current and future water risks to agriculture and food security; and
• Aqueduct Floods, which identifies coastal and riverine flood risks, and analyzes the costs and benefits of investing in flood protection.

Over the past seven years, Aqueduct tools have reached hundreds of thousands of users across the globe and informed decision-makers in and beyond the water sector. Aqueduct data and insights have been featured in major media outlets including, the Economist, the Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, the New York Times and Vox’s Netflix show Explained.

Partners 

Aqueduct is made possible by the support of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of companies, governments and foundations at the cutting edge of water stewardship. Companies, governments and foundations are invited to join the Aqueduct Alliance to advance water stewardship best practice and the Aqueduct tools.

Aqueduct Food is made possible by support from Cargill and the Skoll Global Threats Fund.

We are also pleased to acknowledge our institutional strategic partners, who provide core funding to WRI:

• Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Research partners

The Aqueduct tools and data were developed in collaboration with our research partners at:

• Delft University of Technology
• Deltares
• Utrecht University
• Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM)
• International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
• PBL Netherlands Environmental Agency, and RepRisk.

World Resources Institute is committed to open data. The code, data and methodology behind Aqueduct are documented and available for download. All the products, methodologies, and datasets that make up Aqueduct are available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Aqueduct is managed by WRI's Data Lab. Sign up for the latest data and technology updates from WRI.