hochwasserzentralen.de

What It Is

LHP-PublicAPI is a public REST API opened to developers by Germany’s Länderübergreifendes Hochwasser Portal (cross-state flood portal). Its goal is to enable third-party services to integrate nationwide flood information, making it especially suitable for map displays, media publishing, and redistribution of public warning information. Its data covers around 1,200 flood gauge stations in Germany’s LHP, as well as active flood warnings issued by the federal states.

Core Capabilities

The API provides two main types of data: first, the current flood situation classification for each flood gauge station, including station name, river, geographic location, classification color, classification name, timestamp, station page link, and the relevant federal state portal link; second, regional or river-section-level flood warnings, including title, area type, geographic outline or location, warning level color, and warning level name. The API supports GeoJSON, JSON, and XML, with SVG graphics planned for future support. It also supports filtering queries by one or more federal states. In terms of documentation, the page clearly points to OpenAPI documentation and explains field scope, authorization, update frequency, and usage restrictions, making the basic integration information fairly complete.

Pricing and Licensing

This is a free public API, with data licensed under CC BY 4.0. Users may share and reprocess the data, but must prominently cite the source as “www.hochwasserzentralen.de” and include the time from the dataset’s updated field. Online media must also make the source a clickable link. The data is updated every minute, and online republication is recommended to refresh at least once every 10 minutes.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are its official source, nationwide coverage, frequent updates, and GeoJSON support, which is very friendly for map applications. The returned legend colors and classification names also reduce the cost of visualization. The limitations are also clear: the API does not provide specific measured values such as water level, water volume, or flow rate; users who need this data must contact the respective operators. It also states that the data is unverified raw data, with no guarantee of availability, accuracy, completeness, or consistency.

Who It’s For and Access from China

It is suitable for media outlets, emergency information platforms, map applications, public-sector websites, and data products focused on flood risks in Germany. Access from mainland China is not mentioned in the text, so it is assessed as unknown.