What are India’s District-level Water Quality and Scarcity Estimates?

Data helps us make informed decisions; leveraging data empowers us to make strategic choices. REAL-Water compiled a rich spatially explicit dataset of water quality and scarcity parameters for India to assist decision-makers and researchers in understanding the distribution of water resource risks across the country. Pulling together publicly available data collected and distributed by the government of India as well as a satellite-derived dataset from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, our team has generated a single district-level Geographic Information System (GIS) shapefile which allows for visualization and queries of 226 water quality and scarcity related variables processed at the district level in India. The file type allows visualization and analysis on most GIS software platforms.

^{The shapes represent different types of underground water sources, like alluvium and hard rock formations, in statistics for each district in India. The maroon-colored areas on the map represent regions with mostly alluvial soil, common in places like the Indo-Gangetic plain and some coastal districts. On the other side, the statistics show the proportion of each district comprising hard rock formations. Understanding whether an aquifer is in consolidated (hard rock) or unconsolidated (like alluvium) form is crucial because they have different water recharge and depletion behaviors. Consolidated aquifers, due to fractured flow and localized dynamics, can be trickier to predict compared to unconsolidated ones.}

The district shapefile for India integrates information from multiple datasets in different spatial formats. Its groundwater quality parameters are drawn from a network of monitoring points (typically water supply wells). Its groundwater utilization parameters correspond to district-level polygon summaries of values collected at local Indian administrative units (Blocks/Mandals/Taluks). Its aquifer properties are drawn from aquifer formation boundaries, also represented as polygons. Information on its precipitation and surface water extent are collected as gridded data.

Source data were compiled at the district level for the production of the shapefile and are publicly available for download below, along with detailed metadata descriptions.

_{This report is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this brief are the sole responsibility of The Aquaya Institute and REAL-Water consortium members. They do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.}