This is a copy of content of the former https://wiki.epfl.ch/hydrodata/ that is not integrated in other pages here. It was mostly a webpage about wow to access data on Swiss hydrology? Taken offline on 15 July 2026
The general entry point for hydrological data in Switzerland is the hydrological data portal, www.hydrodaten.admin.ch of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN or BAFU in German).
There is also a general overview page of water-related geodata available at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, FOEN, link.
Attention: their river information system has been integrated into map.geo.admin.ch (see here).
Another important general resource is the Swiss hydrological atlas (for available data to download in form of text files, see here the printed version).
Attention: SwissTopo has changed its coordinate system (see here, migration by 2016). The resources below might use the old system (6 digits) or the new system (7 digits).
This page lists spatial data that is more or less static
Swiss hydrological atlas and Hydromaps:
Includes information on catchments (text, pdf-maps, shape files and raster data but no time series): see here.
All spatial data of Switzerland (wide range of topics):
can be visualized here: map.geo.admin.ch. ATTENTION: the hydrological regime names are mixed up for the jurassien regimes 11 and 12 (still on 18 Aug 2021), see page on regimes.
Bio-geographic climate regions (from opendata.swiss): https://opendata.swiss/en/dataset/biogeographische-regionen-der-schweiz-ch
Swiss catchments:
Spatial data set of "official" small subcatchments of all Swiss rivers (see here).
Spatial data set of Swiss hydrometric gauging station catchments (see here)
Topographical catchment areas of Swiss waterbodies 2km2 (see here)
Topographical catchment areas of Swiss waterbodies 40km2 (see here)
The hydrological atlas also contains a database of small subcatchments, as xls file or as shape file (here). These older delimitation comes with some hydrological catchment characteristics, e.g. the slope or the amount of impervious area (see explanation in the corresponding atlas page, pdf).
Swiss river regime types:
see spatial data set of the FOEN here. ATTENTION: the regime names are mixed up for regimes 11 and 12 see above.
Other spatial data for Switzerland:
Vector25, SwissTopo, here. Available for research, for EPFL, refer to your ENAC responsible for data download from EPFL GEODATA).
There is currently a beta-version of direct geo data distribution to all members of the ETHZ domain, see here.
DTM25, Swiss height model (resolution 25x25m), SwissTopo, here. Better resolutions also available. Available for research. For EPFL, refer to your responsible for data download from EPFL GEODATA
Soil use statistics (resolution 100x100m) from the Swiss Federal Office for Statistics, here (not sure what the distribution rules there are; for EPFL, refer to your responsible for data download from EPFL GEODATA).
Climate regions (NEW): bio-geographic climate regions (from opendata.swiss)
Location illustrations: if you need a very quick-to-produce map to locate your work, you might want to use map.wanderland.ch where you can produce all kind of maps based on SwissTopo data (useful for non GIS users or if you do not have access to SwissTopo maps).
Meteorological data resources
This page lists important Federal meteo products and some Cantonal resources.
Time series (Swiss Federal resources)
New (Oct 2025): from now on, all Swiss Meteorological Data can be downloaded from here: https://opendatadocs.meteoswiss.ch/general/download
Information on the network of automatic MeteoSwiss stations, SwissMetNet, is available here. The map at the bottom links to all stations, direct acces to the map here (there is slider to show the table instead of the map).
Besides the automatic network (hourly data), there is also a manual precipitation observation network with daily precipitation data (in the above map).
The stations are also visible in the map of current values.
Measurements at the SLF stations (snow measurement network) can be found in the MeteoSwiss database
For gridded data: see complete overview of available data for general public on MeteoSwiss page, here (not in english). All data for Spatial Climate Analysise are described here (in english).
For hydrological purposes, the products "RhiresD" (pdf in english) (daily precip at 1km resolution) and "Tabs" (daily temperature) since 1961 are particularly useful. They are also described here (not in english) and an example of gridded precipitation data see here.
NEW: Since June 2019, MeteoSwiss also proposes a probabilistic analysis of area mean daily precipitation, called RhydchprobD, which is described here.
Climatological maps (Swiss Federal resources)
Some gridded average climatological data (maps, no time series) available from the swiss hydrological Atlas (e.g. evaporation, mean annual precipitation)
Extreme value analysis (Swiss Federal resources)
MeteoSwiss has an online database of extreme precipitation analysis, here.
Cantonal ressources (very incomplete):
Canton de Vaud: http://www.vhv.ch/
Hydrologic regimes / monthly river flows
Switzerland shows different climate regimes and a high number of hydrological regimes. The hydrologic regimes are described in the hydrological atlas and can also be visualized here: map.geo.admin.ch. ATTENTION: the hydrological regime names are mixed up for the jurassien regimes 11 and 12 (still on 18 Aug 2021), the names are correct, the numbers are inverted; for the correct names, see this Atlas pdf (large file): 11. pluvial jurassien, 12. nivo-pluvial jurassien
A vector data set called MQ-GWN-CH on the distribution of hydrological regimes along the river reaches is available here (direct download of data table).
A description (in french or german only) of how to obtain these regimes were obtained via discharge classification is given available there.
A simulated raster data set called MQ-CH, of simulated mean monthly discharges is available here. Corresponding future scenarios are also available (here). This is the WSL data set that could previously be ordered from M. Zappa WSL.
Jérôme Dujardin (CRYOS, EPFL) shares his code that uses the above data to estimate monthly river flows and hydrological regimes at any location within Switzerland, see zip file.
Important: the above data sets come with some explanation, partly not in English. At the best of my understanding
The raster data set contains monthly discharges for entire Switzerland, obtained from PREVAH simulations and some adjustment to observed data (optimized data set)
A corresponding vector (catchment) data set can be obtained by connecting the vector set tables "abfluesse" (discharges) to "basisgeometrie" (containing the catchments) via the attribute TEILEZGNR, can be used to generate maps with regime types
However: the above two sets should probably not be used to generate some average discharge for large catchments since their discharge is usually influenced by water resources management; use observed data instead
The vector data set contains a EZGG_MQ data set with the river network and the corresponding hydrological regime for catchments up to 500 km2.
Climatic regimes
I am not aware of a good resource on the climatic regimes in Switzerland. The terminology and climate division that is used by the Swiss Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF is explained here,
The ETH domain has a server for environmental data:
Here a list of experimental catchments with online data:
The Vallon de Nant catchment (Canton de Vaud), run by UNIL and UNIBE
The Haute Mentue catchment (Cantont de Vaud) run by EPFL.