BWI
BWI delivers hydrological forecasts through virtual stations, digitised measurement points that require no physical gauge. It blends satellite data, weather models and deep learning to anticipate river flow, water levels and hydro-climatic hazards such as floods and droughts.
What is BWI?
BWI, short for Blue Water Intelligence, is a French hydrology company that sells river forecasting as a subscription service. Its central idea is the virtual station: a digitised measurement point placed anywhere on a water body, which produces discharge estimates and forecasts without a physical gauge ever being installed. The company frames the problem in blunt terms on its homepage, claiming that 250,000 river basins worldwide are ungauged, and positions itself as neither a weather API nor a satellite imagery vendor but the combination of both applied to river flow. Technically, the platform runs a semi-distributed hydrological model that splits basins into hydrological response units, fed by more than sixty data types. Rainfall-runoff and snowmelt models are coupled with recurrent neural networks and machine learning, and model state is corrected through a reduced-rank square-root Kalman filter. The underlying geodata comes from third-party programmes rather than BWI itself: Copernicus datasets such as EU-Hydro and EU-DEM west of the Urals, HydroSHEDS elsewhere, ESA WorldCover derived from Sentinel imagery, SoilGrid soil properties, and 51-member ECMWF ensembles for meteorological forcing. BWI publishes a performance figure for this stack, reporting Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies above 0.75 on 70% of more than 500 calibrated basins, benchmarked against national services. Outputs are near real-time discharge, forecasts to a 10-day horizon at a 10-minute step, water levels at selected points, and reconstructed flow duration curves covering two to three decades. An early warning layer pushes flood and drought alerts by e-mail, SMS or voice. Delivery is through a web platform and a publicly documented REST API, designed to slot into existing GIS or SCADA systems rather than replace them. Two flagship developments are prominently displayed but not yet operational: a constellation of altimetry nanosatellites for daily water level monitoring, and tethered balloons for water quality. Research on detecting plastic patches from satellite imagery is also awaiting an anchor customer. What is sold and running today is the discharge forecasting service, priced per virtual station per month.
What it does
- Forecast river discharge up to 10 days ahead at a 10-minute time step, anywhere on the covered hydrographic network
- Create virtual measurement stations without deploying any physical gauge, and relocate them at will
- Trigger flood and drought early warnings by e-mail, SMS or voice message to designated recipients
- Estimate river discharge in near real time on ungauged or poorly monitored basins
- Reconstruct twenty to thirty years of past discharge and derive flow duration curves
- Forecast water levels at selected points, including alongside existing physical stations
- Feed forecasts straight into GIS, SCADA or in-house systems through a documented REST API
When to use BWI / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if BWI is the right fit.
When to use BWI
- River basin authorities, municipalities and public works departments that need discharge and water level data where no gauging station exists
- Run-of-river hydropower operators and electricity traders planning day-ahead generation and asset performance
- Insurers, actuaries and risk managers pricing or monitoring flood exposure on rivers
- Irrigation schemes, agri-food and beverage operators managing abstraction against reserved and biological flows
- Development banks, NGOs and engineering firms building infrastructure in poorly instrumented or transboundary basins
When not to use BWI
- Anyone needing groundwater or aquifer data, which BWI explicitly excludes from its scope
- Marine and oceanographic users, since BWI deliberately restricts itself to inland surface water
- Organisations looking for consultancy or study work rather than a continuous data feed
- Buyers of physical gauging hardware or ground station installation, which BWI does not supply
- Individuals, students or small teams wanting to try a tool cheaply, given contract-only sales and mandatory set-up fees
How to use BWI
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request a quote through the contact form, since BWI sells only under a signed licence agreement
- Agree the scope with BWI: which basins and points of interest, how many virtual stations, and which service level
- Settle the mandatory one-time set-up fee, quoted case by case according to the work required
- Let BWI calibrate the hydrological model on the selected sub-basins and run the initial configuration
- Attend the user training included in the set-up phase
- Create individual user accounts online once the employer's licence is active
- Allow three weeks from the effective date before forecast data becomes available
- Place virtual stations on the covered hydrographic network, and relocate them later if needs change
- Configure early warning recipients and channels, e-mail on every plan, SMS and voice on higher tiers
- Consume forecasts through the web interface, or connect the REST API to your GIS, SCADA or in-house systems
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Answers a genuine coverage gap by producing data where no measurement station exists at all
- Publishes a detailed public price list, which is unusual for institutional B2B water services
- States and quantifies its accuracy, with published efficiency scores and benchmarking against national flood services
- Hosts data in the European Union with a named provider and identified data centre locations, verifiable from the server infrastructure
- Offers a publicly reachable API documentation page, readable without an account
- Documents its data sources and modelling approach in unusual technical detail, which makes the claims checkable
- Backs its environmental positioning with a published CSR policy, an eco-design approach and named sustainability memberships
Cons
- No free plan and no free trial: trial periods exist but remain chargeable
- Mandatory set-up fees are never quantified publicly, and the only figure appearing anywhere is an illustrative example in the terms
- High entry cost, since the headline price is per virtual station per month and a single station has limited practical value
- The cheapest tier is heavily restricted, with no water level forecasts, no extended forecast horizon, no history and no SMS alerts
- The site contradicts itself on identity, publishing three different postal addresses and two different share capital figures
- The privacy policy appears to be a foreign template, citing legislation numbered 1998:204 and a repealed European directive
- Satellite constellation and water quality balloons are given prominent space but are explicitly not operational
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan and no free trial: BWI states plainly that the service cannot be tested free of charge, and that trial periods, where they exist, remain chargeable. The lowest paid entry point is the Silver plan at EUR 145 per virtual station per month with no commitment, decreasing to EUR 124, EUR 104 and EUR 88 per station per month under one, three and five-year commitments respectively. A mandatory one-time set-up fee applies to every contract and is quoted case by case rather than published. Prospective buyers should note that all headline prices are per virtual station, so the actual budget scales with the number of monitored points.
- near real-time river discharge
- API access
- relocatable virtual stations
- two months of historical discharge
- e-mail early warning alerts
- EU-Hydro and HydroSHEDS river networks
- 95% guaranteed account uptime
- 50 stations minimum for customisable terms
- everything in Silver plus water level forecasts
- 15-day discharge forecasts
- SMS and voice alerts with ten additional recipients
- 97% guaranteed account uptime
- 10 stations minimum for customisable terms
- EUR 4
- 000 per unit for thirty years of historical discharge and the flow duration curve
- EUR 100 per virtual station per month for hydropower production forecasting
- EUR 100 per virtual station per month for automated report generation
- EUR 870 per virtual station per month
- or EUR 744
- EUR 624 and EUR 528 under one
- three and five-year commitments
- for mission-critical deployments
- One-time mandatory set-up fee on every contract
- quoted case by case and never published
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how BWI handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is real but unevenly documented. The terms commit both parties to European Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and state that BWI does not need to process personal data for the services. The legal notice sets out a full list of data subject rights, including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection to automated processing, portability, complaint and withdrawal of consent, and names the controller as a French company registered with the Toulouse trade register. Rights are exercised by writing to the CEO or to the Toulouse postal address. The weak point is the privacy policy itself, which cites Swedish-style legislation numbered 1998:204 and the repealed Directive 95/46/EC instead of the Regulation. No data protection officer and no Article 27 representative are named.
Who owns the data?
The terms and conditions are unambiguous on the service itself: the Services and every component or development made under the agreement remain the exclusive property of BWI or its licensors, and no ownership right is transferred to the client. On personal data, BWI positions itself as controller only for data collected through its website, and the privacy policy expressly excludes any processing BWI may carry out as a processor while clients use the service. The terms add that BWI does not need to process personal data in connection with the Services. Contractually, BWI may also display a client's name and logo as a reference.
Reuse rights
Nothing on the site grants the end user a right to redistribute or resell BWI's forecasts: the service is licensed, not sold, and intellectual property stays with BWI, so any reuse beyond the client's own operations would need permission. Within that licence the data is meant to be consumed freely inside the client's own systems, through the API or the web interface, to inform decisions on flood preparedness, hydropower scheduling, irrigation or infrastructure. BWI describes itself as a data provider that lets clients build their own strategies. Note the reverse flow too: under the terms, BWI may reuse the client's company name and logo in its marketing and may ask for a case study or testimonial.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
BWI states that its basin digitisation services are hosted in the European Union. It names its server infrastructure provider as Scaleway, a French company, operating data centres in Paris, France; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Warsaw, Poland. BWI adds that its own teams administer the servers rather than delegating operations, and notes that Scaleway's data centres run exclusively on renewable energy, mainly hydropower. This declaration is consistent with independent network checks, which resolve the site to an IP address belonging to Scaleway in Paris, France. Jurisdiction is therefore French and European throughout, and the company is a French entity governed by French law. One caveat: Scaleway is the only third party named anywhere, and no formal subprocessor list is published, while the privacy policy separately asserts that no personal data is shared with third parties at all.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting BWI.
- Headline prices are per virtual station per month: budgets scale with the number of monitored points and can diverge sharply from the advertised figure
- Mandatory set-up fees are never published, and the only figure available anywhere is an illustrative example inside the terms
- There is no free trial; the so-called trial period is billed, with only a partial pro rata refund on early exit
- Forecast data arrives only three weeks after the contract takes effect, which matters if the need is urgent
- Ten-day outputs are described by BWI itself as a trend rather than a forecast, so treating them as operational certainty would be a misuse
- Over-reliance on automated forecasts can erode local hydrological judgement; the service is explicitly a decision-support layer, not a substitute for expertise or for official flood warning authorities
- No data processing agreement, no formal subprocessor list and no security certification are published, and the licensing terms let BWI use the client's name and logo in its marketing
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for the end user, moderate at the project level. No software installation is required, and users create accounts online once their employer holds a licence. The effort sits upstream: a mandatory set-up phase covers calibration of the hydrological model on the chosen sub-basins, user training and initial configuration, sometimes with integration work. Forecast data becomes available three weeks after the effective date. Day to day, non-technical staff can work entirely from the web interface, while connecting the REST API to a GIS or SCADA system needs developer involvement. The API becomes necessary beyond ten hours of lead time.
Deployment
Behind BWI
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does the acronym BWI stand for?
What exactly is a virtual station?
Can I test BWI for free?
How much does it cost?
Is there an API, and is it documented?
Where is the data hosted?
How far ahead and how accurately can BWI forecast?
Does BWI cover groundwater or small water bodies?
How quickly is the service usable after signing?
Can I cancel my subscription?
Should you pick BWI?
BWI occupies a narrow but genuinely underserved niche. Most river basins on the planet carry no measuring equipment, and a service that produces credible discharge estimates and ten-day forecasts without installing hardware answers a real operational problem for basin authorities, hydropower operators, insurers and irrigation managers alike. The technical transparency is a strong point: BWI names its data sources, describes its modelling and assimilation approach, and publishes accuracy figures benchmarked against national services, which is more than most vendors in this field offer. The commercial proposition is more demanding than the marketing suggests. Pricing is public and detailed, which deserves credit, but it is quoted per virtual station per month, and a single station rarely delivers value on its own. Add a mandatory set-up fee that is never published, a three-week wait before data flows, and multi-year commitments to reach the attractive rates, and the real cost of entry is substantially higher than the EUR 145 headline. There is no free trial to soften that. Buyers should also read the site critically. Two of its flagship programmes, the nanosatellite constellation and the water quality balloons, are displayed prominently but are not operational. The legal documentation is careless in ways that matter for procurement: three different postal addresses, two different share capital figures, a currency inconsistency in the pricing example, and a privacy policy that cites the wrong legislation entirely. None of this undermines the forecasting product, which appears mature and is deployed with named institutional clients, but it does mean the contractual and compliance layer deserves scrutiny before signature. For a professional buyer with real basins to monitor, BWI is worth a serious look; it is not a tool to explore casually.
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