Development and demonstration of a structured hydrological feature coding system for Europe

Validation of large amounts of digital hydrological data and eventual exchange of data between various organisations can benefit from the development of a structured hydrological feature coding system. In this article we describe the development of such a system and present its implementation in the CCM2 structured hydrological feature data set, covering Europe to the Urals and including Turkey. We discuss the coding of river basins, catchments, lakes and rivers. The proposed coding system is largely inspired by the work of Otto Pfafstetter with additions for coding oceans, seas, islands and lakes. Furthermore the coding system can be transferred to features that geometrically intersect the coded hydrological features and we propose some rules on how to establish this transfer.