It's right, aqueduct from the Coca-Cola's new data will be in the water pressure, water reuse, and detailed sub-basin level in geography drought in thirteen global map form. This is a water resources than the existing database in the public domain, often into their maps, much more at the national or local watershed level perspective.

Wonderful map! The only thing that would make it more useful is to embed the names of cities so that you can see which metropolitan areas (e.g. Denver) are causing stress on the water system. You could also highlight those areas and provide rollover information on their population growth over the last 10 years. The "analyze location" feature does not seem to work, so embedding the names of cities could help make this map a little more user-friendly.

Thanks for your comment, David. You are correct, Aqueduct looks only at water supply and availability risks to businesses, and not necessarily at how resilience to drought or floods is accomplished. Therefore, a more heavily engineered river basin, one including dams, levees, diversions, and re-engineered floodplains, could be seen as one more resilient and of lower risk to business.

Aqueduct’s global maps do not directly take into account the natural functions and ecosystem services of rivers, however, the ‘Baseline Water Stress’ is a measure of the amount of water withdrawals relative to available renewable freshwater supply, and therefore provides a measure of how much water is left in the system for ecosystem services and river health.

Baseline water stress maps, like the global maps available currently, are just one component of Aqueduct’s analysis of water risk. Detailed river basin maps, which will be available later in the year, will include other indicators including ‘Environmental Flow Modification’, which measures the amount of renewable water no longer available for the environment as a percentage of the total renewable water naturally available.

Aqueduct will also provide a measure of water quality, specifically Biological Oxygen Demand and Total Suspended Solids, as well as wastewater treatment capacity. Although these do not take into account natural functions of rivers they do serve as a proxy for the overall health of the river system.

An interesting area for further research might be looking at how an ecosystem approach to resilience management can reduce corporate water risks.

It's great to see this initiative bringing companies (plus one government, the Dutch who tend to be more farsighted about such things), scientists, and NGOs into a common enterprise to map water stress. But how does water stress relate to RIVER stress? I've just perused the material (not thoroughly, of course; who has time?) and wonder how it will help identify the stressors affecting my local river, the Rio Grande in New Mexico. That river has been thoroughly engineered over the past 100 years leaving it with little natural function (floodplains out of reach of the channelized river, which has been incised from the net effects of upstream dams withholding silt, resulting in the death of native riparian trees and invasion of others, etc), but a more or less efficient water transport system. From what I glean from the indicators, the Rio Grande might score well for risk mitigation precisely because of the unsustainable engineering that has so dramatically harmed the river's natural functions. Upstream dams, levees everywhere, diversions and re-engineered floodplains used for unsustainable agriculture, but form a hydrological standpoint, that infrastructure provides management flexibility for responding to floods and droughts. An ecosystem approach to resilience management would rely on upper watershed treatments to recharge the aquifers above the river basin and rework land policies to allow flooding into the floodplains to benefit vegetation, fish, and aquifers along the channel. Presumably such a river would score low for not having storage dams. How does the mapping take into account the natural functions of rivers and the ecosystem services of all the little bits and pieces of natural river ecosystems that make a river so much more than the sum of the water flowing between its banks (or levees)? If anyone comments on this, I invite you to also post something in our Linked in discussion group on water ethics, and to participate in the water ethics network: www.waterculture.org/Water_Ethics_Network/