How to identify your industrial sites most exposed to water stress?

Water, an operational risk that can no longer be ignored

Water stress is no longer a matter of environmental forecasting: it is a concrete, growing, and well-documented production risk. In 2023, 82% of French territory experienced restrictions on surface water use. Industrial sites located in the most affected areas endured crisis-level conditions for more than two months. The trend is structural: five of the last seven years have recorded historically high crisis levels.

For industrial companies, the consequences are direct: production stoppages or slowdowns, emergency logistics costs, increased regulatory risk, and reputational exposure. This is no longer a peripheral CSR issue — it is a business continuity issue.

It is in this context that imaGeau organized, on May 5, its second webinar in a series of four, dedicated to its Water Stress Index (WSI): a tool designed to identify, with reliability and local precision, the sites most exposed.

The limits of existing global tools

Two platforms are widely used today to assess water risk: the WWF’s Water Risk Filter (WRF) and the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct. These tools have real value: they are scientifically grounded and provide an initial level of insight.

But their limitations are significant for industrial users:

• Too broad a geographic resolution. Both platforms operate at the scale of large watersheds — sometimes several hundred square kilometers. Two sites 60 kilometers apart can receive the same score, even though their real hydrogeological situations are radically different.

• Data that is sometimes outdated. Some indicators rely on data from the 2000s, without integrating recent extreme climate events.

• No groundwater data. Yet a significant share of French industrial sites is supplied by groundwater aquifers — a dimension completely absent from these platforms.

During the live poll, a majority of the 57 participants had never assessed their site’s exposure to water stress. The others had mostly used WRF or Aqueduct, without always trusting the granularity of the results.

imaGeau’s Water Stress Index: local, scientific, and actionable scoring

The WSI was developed by imaGeau’s hydrogeology and climatology experts, in connection with its scientific origins (founded with CNRS Géosciences Montpellier). It assesses risk related to water resources through six indicators organized into three axes:

1. Resource fragility — Recharge capacity and storage capacity of groundwater and surface water resources.

2. Resource decline — Depletion index and exploitation rate: a site is never the only user of a resource; it is essential to understand the level of collective pressure already being applied.

3. Climate stress — Frequency and intensity of dry spells, vulnerability to climate change.

Each indicator receives a score and a confidence level assigned by an expert, who checks the availability and reliability of the local data used. The final score, on a scale from 1 to 5, is accompanied by an explanatory note for each indicator and short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations.

A WSI above 2.6 triggers a recommendation to carry out a full on-site audit.