Water Quality 35% open

What data is expected?

Data, measured at the water source, on the quality of water is essential for both the delivery of services and the prevention of diseases. In order to satisfy the minimum requirements for this category, data should be available on level of the following chemicals by water source and be updated at least weekly:

• fecal coliform
• arsenic
• fluoride levels
• nitrates
• TDS (Total dissolved solids)

What data is available

•   Openly licensed? No (No URL given)
•   Is the data available for free? Yes
•   Is the data machine readable? No (n/a)
•   Available in bulk? No
•   Is the data provided on a timely and up to date basis? No
•   Publicly available? Yes(as Divided over multiple datasources published by Flemish Environmental Service, La société wallonne des eaux, Vivaqua & HydroBru in Brussels)
•   Is data in digital form? Yes
•   Is the data available online? Yes (Here)
•   Does the data exist? Yes

Details

I had two issues in my search for this data. 1. Water quality is a regional, not federal, matter. The global census prevents me to link to more than one source for the data, which is in this case hard to do.

1. Lack of definition of the dataset. Is this about water surfaces? Of water ways or watercourses? Of also of lakes, the seashore, etc? Or is it about ground water? Potable water, sewage water,...

Data is very dispersed. The Walloon region has a good tool to search the quality of potable water in your street, with levels of hardness and chemicals. Flanders also has a seperate webpage with data on swimming water quality. In lakes, swimming pools and the sea. They also have extensive reports and different datasets on water quality of measuring on the OpenDataForum.

So although a lot is going on water quality data in our regional governments, there is no easy way of measuring this on a national scale.

Reviewer comments

Water quality is monitored regionally and in Belgium there is no Federal oversight. So data will be at the regional level and not consistently represented or available.