SEPA Water Monitoring

SEPA Water Monitoring

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency provides real-time and historical water monitoring data for Scotland through a KiWIS (Kisters Water Information System) API.

Data Model

• Stations — Hydrometric monitoring stations across Scotland. Identified by station_no.
• Time Series — Measurement series at a station (e.g. "Day.Max", "15min.Cmd"). Identified by ts_id.
• Parameter Types — What is measured: S (Stage/water level), Q (Discharge/flow), R (Rainfall), T (Temperature).
• Values — Timestamped measurement readings for a given time series.

Key Patterns

• Stations have a station_no (e.g. "15018", "234150") used for lookups.
• Time series IDs (ts_id) are numeric (e.g. "56758010") and unique across the system.
• Common time series names: "Day.Max", "Day.Min", "15min.Cmd", "Month.Max", "CalendarYear.Mean".
• Date format for queries: YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601).

Gotchas

• Response format: KiWIS returns arrays of arrays (first row is column headers).
• Parameter types: "S" = Stage (water level in metres), "Q" = Discharge (flow in m³/s), "R" = Rainfall (mm).
• Empty results: Some time series have no data for requested date ranges — this is normal.
• Max results: Use maxNumberOfResults to limit station/series listings.

Typical workflow

1. Search or list stations to obtain station_no.
2. List time series at that station to obtain ts_id and parameter types.
3. Fetch values for the requested start_date / end_date window.