Mapping data poverty in the water environment: national-scale assessment of gaps and biases in the Philippine hydrometric network

Poor and uneven freshwater monitoring undermines the vision of data-driven water governance in the Global South. This paper examines coverage gaps in the Philippine hydrometric network based on benchmarks for equitable monitoring and other geospatial criteria: disaster risk, climate type, ecoregions, basin importance and infrastructure priority. A large-river bias is evident in the network. Stations are also found to be disproportionately concentrated in cities (p < 0.05), built-up areas (p < 0.05) and densely populated localities (p < 0.001). Monitoring improvements should prioritize targeted network expansion, redistributive investments in ungauged watersheds and harmonized data co-production among currently siloed water institutions.