To ensure successful water management, water resource managers need to be able to get hold of reliable, up-to-date and relevant data and information when they need it and in a form that they can use.

Within each country, the necessary datasets are produced through various data collection processes managed by numerous institutions, and generally organized through:

- Monitoring programmes established at national, basin and local/organization levels;
- Self-monitoring processes (e.g. by individual industries relating to discharges)
- Surveys / inventories / inspections carried out by statistical services or administrative services involved in the management of water resources (basin organizations, municipal services, etc.);
- Declarations related to administrative procedures: authorizations / permits for sampling and discharges, declaration for construction of water works;
- Studies and simulations (impact studies, technical study of works, etc.).

Monitoring programmes in many cases rely on data production processes using in situ traditional monitoring stations (more details about monitoring stations).

However, in response to the lack of data and thanks to new drone/aerial/satellite and communication tools, traditional collection is now increasingly supplemented by

- Remote Sensing data production processes (details about remote sensing)

- and  by crowd sourcing data production processes (detail about crowd sourcing)