France: Hub'Eau
| Provider | fr_hubeau |
| Country | Hydrometry: metropolitan and overseas France; temperature: metropolitan France |
| Published by | Hub'Eau (hubeau.eaufrance.fr) |
| Variables | Discharge, stage, water temperature |
| Stations in the catalogue | 7,347 (6,475 hydrometry and 872 temperature). Availability depends on quantity and period |
| Station metadata | Station name, water-body name, drainage area and elevation. See Fields by provider |
| Credentials | None |
| Licence stated by Hub'Eau | Licence ouverte Etalab |
| Agency documentation | Hub'Eau hydrometry API, Hub'Eau river temperature API |
Retrieve published daily mean discharge at station Y251002001, L'Orb à Bédarieux:
import rivretrieve as rr
selection = rr.find(
provider="fr_hubeau",
station="Y251002001",
quantity="discharge",
frequency="daily",
statistic="mean",
)
result = rr.fetch(selection, start="2024-01-01", end="2024-01-07", cache="bypass")
preview = result.data.select("time", "time_zone", "value", "unit").head(3)
print(preview.write_csv(float_precision=3), end="")
print(result.data.height)
print(result.issues)
Output:
time,time_zone,value,unit
2024-01-01T00:00:00.000000,unknown,1.159,m3/s
2024-01-02T00:00:00.000000,unknown,1.144,m3/s
2024-01-03T00:00:00.000000,unknown,1.159,m3/s
7
()
The request returned seven daily values and no retrieval issues (the empty tuple ()).
An empty issue tuple does not mean the source has approved the quality of the values.
The values are source-published daily means, returned in m³/s. RivRetrieve does not
calculate them from instantaneous observations. Bare dates include the whole first
and last day. cache="bypass" requests the source rather than a local cache.
The preview shows the first three values, rounded to three decimal places. unknown
means RivRetrieve has not established the time zone of these daily labels. Source values
can change, so a later retrieval need not reproduce this output exactly.
See Usage for selection options and working with returned data.
Who measures, and who publishes
France's hydrometric records bring together measurements from regional environmental authorities (DREAL) and other national and local producers. The Service Central Vigicrues runs the national hydrometry platform, PHyC. Records cover metropolitan France and overseas territories; availability and record length vary by station.
Hub'Eau provides open APIs for French water data. It is a collaboration between the French biodiversity agency (OFB) and BRGM, the French geological survey.
RivRetrieve reads published daily discharge and stage from Hub'Eau's hydrometry API. Water temperature follows a separate route: Hub'Eau's river-temperature API distributes records from Naïades for metropolitan France. It is not part of the PHyC hydrometric network.
Hub'Eau's name does not identify the original producer of every measurement. This matters when citing a dataset (see Terms and citation).
What you can retrieve
Select provider="fr_hubeau" for daily hydrometry and temperature.
For station-own instantaneous discharge and stage, use the separate
HydroPortail provider. The services retain separate station
inventories, source identities and terms.
| Quantity filter | Source field / variant |
Frequency | Statistic | Source unit | Returned unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
discharge |
QmnJ |
Daily | Mean | l/s | m³/s |
discharge |
QIXnJ |
Daily | Maximum | l/s | m³/s |
stage |
HIXnJ |
Daily | Maximum | mm | m |
temperature |
resultat, parameter 1301 |
Unknown | Unknown | °C | °C |
These source fields identify the published observations; there is no separate
variant to choose for these Hub'Eau products.
RivRetrieve converts discharge from litres per second to cubic metres per second, and stage from millimetres to metres. Temperature is already in °C. The daily maxima are maxima of instantaneous values, not maxima of daily means. RivRetrieve does not calculate additional daily statistics from instantaneous records.
A station being listed does not guarantee that it has data for every quantity or requested period. Hub'Eau describes daily hydrometric records reaching back to 1900 at some stations.
Stations and sites
A site is a reach of river where discharge measurements are considered homogeneous and comparable. A station is a measuring installation within that site. It can provide stage, discharge, or both.
One site can hold several stations. Keep the station identifier when selecting observations; a site and a station are different source identities.
Temperature comes from a separate monitoring network. Do not assume that a station selected for discharge also provides temperature.
Time
The example's time column contains daily dates represented at midnight. Its
time_zone="unknown" means that RivRetrieve has not established the clock defining
the start and end of those days. Hub'Eau describes its hydrometric dates as UTC,
but that statement alone does not establish which 24 hours a daily value covers.
Temperature observations have separate source date and clock fields. Their time zone
is also unknown. RivRetrieve has not established whether each value represents an
instant or an interval, or what sampling or averaging period applies.
Data status
The source publishes qualification and method metadata alongside hydrometric values. RivRetrieve does not turn those fields into a quality ranking or add observation quality flags to the returned table. A returned value alone does not establish its validation status. See Usage to retain source material when that metadata matters to the analysis.
Terms and citation
Hub'Eau's terms of use, section 5.1.3, state:
La réutilisation des Jeux de données est régie par la licence ouverte Etalab, https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/licence-ouverte-open-licence. Les Jeux de données sont donc librement et gratuitement utilisables et réutilisables, y compris dans un but commercial. L'utilisateur de ces données doit néanmoins veiller à citer l'auteur des Jeux de données.
In English, unofficially: reuse is governed by the Etalab open licence, including commercial reuse, and requires citation of the dataset author. The linked Licence Ouverte 2.0 requires the source (at least the licensor) and the last-update date of the reused information. A retrieval date does not necessarily establish that last-update date.
Hub'Eau distributes data from several producers. Cite the dataset author rather than assuming the API operator produced every observation. No ready-made citation string was identified in its terms.
These terms apply to the Hub'Eau route. They do not establish the terms of the separate HydroPortail service. Hub'Eau retrieval requires no personal credentials in RivRetrieve.
Sources
| Page | Checked |
|---|---|
| Hub'Eau — API Hydrométrie | 2026-09-21 |
| Hub'Eau — API Température des cours d'eau | 2026-09-21 |
| Hub'Eau — Conditions générales d'utilisation | 2026-09-21 |
| Hub'Eau — Mentions légales / Crédits | 2026-09-21 |
| Licence Ouverte 2.0 | 2026-09-21 |
| HydroPortail — La station hydrométrique | 2026-09-21 |
| HydroPortail — Le site hydrométrique | 2026-09-21 |
The station count describes the packaged catalogue. The example observations were retrieved on 2026-09-21.