Geospatial dataset for hydrologic analyses in India (GHI): a quality-controlled dataset on river gauges, catchment boundaries and hydrometeorological time series

Streamflow gauging stations not only track the pulse of rivers but also act as common reference points for hydrologic and other environmental analyses. As such, streamflow data and metadata on gauging stations - Geographic Information System (GIS) data on station locations, their upstream catchment boundaries and river flow networks - are critical for analyses. However, for India's river basins, the availability of such data is limited; when available, data are not in an analysis-ready format and can have substantial errors. Studies often use available information from India's water agencies as is, without checking its validity. This study addresses the above limitations by building a new dataset using existing metadata (from the Central Water Commission, CWC, and the Water Resources Information System, WRIS) and checking it against publicly available information from global data sources (e.g., World Wildlife Fund, Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain Hydro and Copernicus) and online maps (e.g., Google Maps). The quality control process categorizes existing metadata based on their consistency with these sources; also, existing metadata are supplemented with additional information where needed. The new dataset developed here is called the "Geospatial dataset for Hydrologic analyses in India" (GHI) and uses Hydrological data and maps based on Shuttle Elevation Derivatives at multiple Scales (HydroSHEDS) data as the underlying template. GHI has both geospatial and time series information. In this initial version of GHI, the spatial domain includes only the river basins of Peninsular India where daily streamflow data are publicly available.