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Hydropower Infrastructure - LAkes, Reservoirs, and RIvers (HILARRI)

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HILARRI

Dataset Overview

The Hydropower Infrastructure - LAkes, Reservoirs, and RIvers (HILARRI) is a database of links between major datasets of operational hydropower dams and powerplants, and inland water bodies. These connections are critical for conducting large-scale analysis of hydropower infrastructure and their associated natural and engineered water systems. Features include:

  • Dams from the National Inventory of Dams (2019) and the Global Reservoir and Dam Database (GRanD v1.3),
  • Hydropower plants from the Existing Hydropower Assets dataset (EHA 2021)

These hydropower infrastructure features are linked to several major datasets that provide hydrologic and hydraulic information relevant for analysis of hydropower systems that includes the integral water resources. That information comes from:

  • Products from the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD)
    • NHDPlusV2 Medium Resolution river network flowlines,
    • NHD water bodies (limited to lakes and reservoirs),
    • NHD Watershed Boundary Dataset (HUC12-level for the Conterminous United States (CONUS)), and
  • HydroLAKES water bodies (lakes and reservoirs).

Unique identifiers are preserved to facilitate joining to the original full datasets (e.g., additional characteristics of NHD flowlines can be joined from the NHDPlusV2 dataset to HILARRI based on the ID field, “COMID”, that is common to both datasets). HILARRI only includes basic information about identifiers, location, and data quality or usage notes.

The HILARRI dataset also incorporates information from additional datasets to facilitate more effective and accurate analysis. For example, dams were checked against the most recent American Rivers Dam Removal Database to identify and remove facilities that no longer exist. Additionally, dams that are listed multiple times in the NID are identified and flagged to avoid double-counting when analyzing and summarizing information. Other quality flags include certainty of operational hydropower (i.e., if one or more datasets indicates hydropower at a particular location), and whether an associated water body is accurate or composed of multiple polygons. These additional data flags will increase confidence in data usage for individual to large-scale analyses.

Related Datasets (related to any of the already published dataset on HydroSource): EHA Operational Plants 2021, EHA Pipeline 2021, EHA Retired Plants

 

HILLARI_Flowchart_v1_1
Linking of HILARRI to other attributes from the contributing datasets