Australian Water Storage Dams and Capacities

Australian water availability dams and their total storage capacities from the 1996/99 period. The dataset contains spatial locations and attributes for dams within Surface Water Management Areas. It was compiled by Australian State and Territory agencies and published by the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry.

Use Cases

• Map dam locations using spatial coordinates for regional water security assessments.
• Analyze total storage capacity in megalitres (ML) per dam for supply modeling.
• Link dams to their unique identifiers and Surface Water Management Areas (SWMAs) for administrative tracking.
• Assess water infrastructure density by state or territory based on provided jurisdictional data.

Strengths

• Data includes total capacity in megalitres (ML) for each storage.
• Spatial locations enable geographic visualization and analysis.
• Attributes were provided by authoritative State and Territory agencies.

Limitations

• Data reflects a historical snapshot from 1996/99 and may not reflect current infrastructure.
• Specific row counts and total number of dams are not provided.
• No information on other dam attributes like construction date or purpose.

Provenance

Source

Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).

Collection Method

Entered into a database by each Australian State and Territory.

Time Range

1996/99

Freshness

Data reflects the 1996/99 period, though metadata was last updated in 2026.

Geography

Australia