** IMPORTANT UPDATE: **

Until now, the project and public versions of SWORD have been kept separate while algorithms were being developed in preparation for SWOT launch. Now that the SWOT mission is here, we have decided to publish the project version of SWORD which is why the version numbers jump after v2. The primary difference between the project and public versions of SWORD are extra "filler" variables in the NetCDF format that will be used for calculating discharge. Everything else, reach definition, attribute values, etc. are the same between the two versions. For details on the filler variables please reference the Product Description Document provided with the downloads.

If you use the SWORD Database in your work, please cite: Altenau et al., (2021) The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission River Database (SWORD): A Global River Network for Satellite Data Products. Water Resources Research. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030054

You can also visit www.swordexplorer.com to explore the current version of SWORD before downloading.

1. Summary:

The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, planned to launch in 2022, will vastly expand observations of river water surface elevation (WSE), width, and slope. In order to facilitate a wide range of new analyses with flexibility, the SWOT mission will provide a range of relevant data products. One product the SWOT mission will provide are river vector products stored in shapefile format for each SWOT overpass (JPL Internal Document, 2020b). The SWOT vector data products will be most broadly useful if they allow multitemporal analysis of river nodes and reaches covering the same river areas. Doing so requires defining SWOT reaches and nodes a priori, so that SWOT data can be assigned to them. The SWOt River Database (SWORD) combines multiple global river- and satellite-related datasets to define the nodes and reaches that will constitute SWOT river vector data products. SWORD provides high-resolution river nodes (200 m) and reaches (~10 km) in shapefile and netCDF formats with attached hydrologic variables (WSE, width, slope, etc.) as well as a consistent topological system for global rivers 30 m wide and greater.

2. Data Formats:

The SWORD database is provided in netCDF, geopackage, and shapefile formats. All files start with a two-digit continent identifier (“af” – Africa, “as” – Asia / Siberia, “eu” – Europe / Middle East, “na” – North America, “oc” – Oceania, “sa” – South America). File syntax denotes the regional information for each file and varies slightly between netCDF and shapefile formats.

NetCDF files are structured in 3 groups: centerlines, nodes, and reaches. The centerline group contains location information and associated reach and node ids along the original GRWL 30 m centerlines (Allen and Pavelsky, 2018). Node and reach groups contain hydrologic attributes at the ~200 m node and ~10 km reach locations (see description of attributes below). NetCDFs are distributed at continental scales with a filename convention as follows: [continent]_sword_v14.nc (i.e. na_sword_v14.nc).

SWORD shapefiles consist of four main files (.dbf, .prj, .shp, .shx). There are separate shapefiles for nodes and reaches, where nodes are represented as ~200 m spaced points and reaches are represented as polylines. All shapefiles are in geographic (latitude/longitude) projection, referenced to datum WGS84. Shapefiles are split into HydroBASINS (Lehner and Grill, 2013) Pfafstetter level 2 basins (hbXX) for each continent with a naming convention as follows: [continent]_sword_[nodes/reaches]_hb[XX]_v14.shp (i.e. na_sword_nodes_hb74_v14.shp; na_sword_reaches_hb74_v14.shp).

SWORD geopackage files are split into two files for nodes and reaches per continental region, where nodes are represented as 200 m spaced points and reaches are represented as polylines. All geopackage files are in geographic (latitude/longitude) projection, referenced to datum WGS84. Geopackage file names are distributed at continental scales and are defined by a two-digit identifier (Table 2): [continent]_sword_[nodes/reaches]_v14.gpkg (i.e. na_sword_nodes_v14.gpkg; na_sword_reaches_v14.gpkg).

3. Attribute Description:

This list contains the primary attributes contained in the SWORD netCDFs and shapefiles.

• x: Longitude of the node or reach ranging from 180°E to 180°W (units: decimal degrees).
• y: Latitude of the node or reach ranging from 90°S to 90°N (units: decimal degrees).
• node_id: ID of each node. The format of the id is as follows: CBBBBBRRRRNNNT where C = Continent (the first number of the Pfafstetter basin code), B = Remaining Pfafstetter basin code up to level 6, R = Reach number (assigned sequentially within a level 6 basin starting at the downstream end working upstream), N = Node number (assigned sequentially within a reach starting at the downstream end working upstream), T = Type (1 – river, 3 – lake on river, 4 – dam or waterfall, 5 – unreliable topology, 6 – ghost node).
• node_length (node files only): Node length measured along the GRWL centerline points (units: meters).
• reach_id: ID of each reach. The format of the id is as follows: CBBBBBRRRRT where C = Continent (the first number of the Pfafstetter basin code), B = Remaining Pfafstetter basin codes up to level 6, R = Reach number (assigned sequentially within a level 6 basin starting at the downstream end working upstream, T = Type (1 – river, 3 – lake on river, 4 – dam or waterfall, 5 – unreliable topology, 6 – ghost reach).
• reach_length (reach files only): Reach length measured along the GRWL centerline points (units: meters).
• wse: Average water surface elevation (WSE) value for a node or reach. WSEs are extracted from the MERIT Hydro dataset (Yamazaki et al., 2019) and referenced to the EGM96 geoid (units: meters).
• wse_var: WSE variance along the GRWL centerline points used to calculate the average WSE for each node or reach (units: square meters).
• width: Average width for a node or reach (units: meters).
• width_var: Width variance along the GRWL centerline points used to calculate the average width for each node or reach (units: square meters).
• max_width: Maximum width value across the channel for each node or reach that includes island and bar areas (units: meters).
• facc: Maximum flow accumulation value for a node or reach. Flow accumulation values are extracted from the MERIT Hydro dataset (Yamazaki et al., 2019) (units: square kilometers).
• n_chan_max: Maximum number of channels for each node or reach.
• n_chan_mod: Mode of the number of channels for each node or reach.
• obstr_type: Type of obstruction for each node or reach based on the Globale Obstruction Database (GROD, Whittemore et al., 2020) and HydroFALLS data (http://wp.geog.mcgill.ca/hydrolab/hydrofalls). Obstr_type values: 0 - No Dam, 1 - Dam, 2 - Channel Dam, 3 - Lock, 4 - Low Permeable Dam, 5 - Waterfall.
• grod_id: The unique GROD ID for each node or reach with obstr_type values 1-4.
• hfalls_id: The unique HydroFALLS ID for each node or reach with obstr_type value 5.
• dist_out: Distance from the river outlet for each node or reach (units: meters).
• type: Type identifier for a node or reach: 1 – river, 2 – lake off river, 3 – lake on river, 4 – dam or waterfall, 5 – unreliable topology, 6 – ghost reach/node.
• lakeflag: GRWL water body identifier for each reach: 0 – river, 1 – lake/reservoir, 2 – canal, 3 – tidally influenced river.
• manual_add (node files only): Binary flag indicating whether the node was manually added to the public GRWL centerlines (Allen and Pavelsky, 2018). These nodes were originally given a width = 1, but have since been updated to have the reach width values.
• meand_len (node files only): Length of the meander that a node belongs to, measured from beginning of the meander to its end in meters. For nodes longer than one meander, the meander length will represent the average length of all meanders belonging to the node (units: meters).
• sinuosity (node files only): The total reach length the node belongs to divided by the Euclidean distance between the reach end points.
• slope (reach files only): Reach average slope calculated along the GRWL centerline points. Slopes are calculated using a linear regression (units: meters/kilometer).
• n_nodes (reach files only): Number of nodes associated with each reach.
• n_rch_up (reach files only): Number of upstream reaches for each reach.
• n_rch_down (reach files only): Number of downstream reaches for each reach.
• rch_id_up (reach files only): Reach IDs of the upstream neighboring reaches.
• rch_id_dn (reach files only): Reach IDs of the downstream neighboring reaches.
• swot_obs (reach files only):

National Monuments Service - Archaeological Survey of Ireland. Published by Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Available under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0).This Archaeological Survey of Ireland dataset is published from the database of the National Monuments Service Sites and Monuments Record (SMR). This dataset also can be viewed and interrogated through the online Historic Environment Viewer: https://heritagedata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=0c9eb9575b544081b0d296436d8f60f8

A Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) was issued for all counties in the State between 1984 and 1992. The SMR is a manual containing a numbered list of certain and possible monuments accompanied by 6-inch Ordnance Survey maps (at a reduced scale). The SMR formed the basis for issuing the Record of Monuments and Places (RMP) - the statutory list of recorded monuments established under Section 12 of the National Monuments (Amendment) Act 1994. The RMP was issued for each county between 1995 and 1998 in a similar format to the existing SMR. The RMP differs from the earlier lists in that, as defined in the Act, only monuments with known locations or places where there are believed to be monuments are included.

The large Archaeological Survey of Ireland archive and supporting database are managed by the National Monuments Service and the records are continually updated and supplemented as additional monuments are discovered. On the Historic Environment viewer an area around each monument has been shaded, the scale of which varies with the class of monument. This area does not define the extent of the monument, nor does it define a buffer area beyond which ground disturbance should not take place – it merely identifies an area of land within which it is expected that the monument will be located. It is not a constraint area for screening – such must be set by the relevant authority who requires screening for their own purposes. This data has been released for download as Open Data under the DPER Open Data Strategy and is licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Please note that the centre point of each record is not indicative of the geographic extent of the monument. The existing point centroids were digitised relative to the OSI 6-inch mapping and the move from this older IG-referenced series to the larger-scale ITM mapping will necessitate revisions. The accuracy of the derived ITM co-ordinates is limited to the OS 6-inch scale and errors may ensue should the user apply the co-ordinates to larger scale maps. Records that do not refer to 'monuments' are designated 'Redundant record' and are retained in the archive as they may relate to features that were once considered to be monuments but which on investigation proved otherwise. Redundant records may also refer to duplicate records or errors in the data structure of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland.

This dataset is provided for re-use in a number of ways and the technical options are outlined below. For a live and current view of the data, please use the web services or the data extract tool in the Historic Environment Viewer. The National Monuments Service also provide an Open Data snapshot of its national dataset in CSV as a bulk data download. Users should consult the National Monument Service website https://www.archaeology.ie/ for further information and guidance on the National Monument Act(s) and the legal significance of this dataset.

Open Data Bulk Data Downloads (version date: 23/08/2023)

The Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) is provided as a national download in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. This format can be easily integrated into a number of software clients for re-use and analysis. The Longitude and Latitude coordinates are also provided to aid its re-use in web mapping systems, however, the ITM easting/northings coordinates should be quoted for official purposes. ERSI Shapefiles of the SMR points and SMRZone polygons are also available The SMRZones represent an area around each monument, the scale of which varies with the class of monument. This area does not define the extent of the monument, nor does it define a buffer area beyond which ground disturbance should not take place – it merely identifies an area of land within which it is expected that the monument will be located. It is not a constraint area for screening – such must be set by the relevant authority who requires screening for their own purposes.

GIS Web Service APIs (live views):

For users with access to GIS software please note that the Archaeological Survey of Ireland data is also available spatial data web services. By accessing and consuming the web service users are deemed to have accepted the Terms and Conditions. The web services are available at the URL endpoints advertised below:

SMR; https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/SMROpenData/FeatureServer

SMRZone; https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/HyjXgkV6KGMSF3jt/arcgis/rest/services/SMRZoneOpenData/FeatureServer

Historic Environment Viewer - Query Tool

The "Query" tool can alternatively be used to selectively filter and download the data represented in the Historic Environment Viewer. The instructions for using this tool in the Historic Environment Viewer are detailed in the associated Help file: https://www.archaeology.ie/sites/default/files/media/pdf/HEV_UserGuide_v01.pdf...

A collection of shapefiles created and compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The data is intended to help people understand and predict weather patterns - in particular to plan for potentially dangerous weather conditions such as storms and droughts.

From the site: "The National Weather Service produces short-term warnings to protect lives and property. Four types of warnings (Tornado, Severe Thunderstorm, Flash Flood, and Special Marine) include polygon information at the bottom of the warning, highlighting the primary threat area for the warning. Data from these warnings are collected and databased into a real-time set of GIS shapefiles. These files can be downloaded from this website in order to be used real-time in other Geographic Information Systems applications."