France Drought & Water Restriction Monitor (VigiEau)

Get the current official French drought/water-restriction status — vigilance, alerte, alerte renforcée, or crise — and the concrete usage restrictions (watering, car washing, industrial use, etc.) for any French address or INSEE commune code, sourced directly from the government's VigiEau platform.

When should an AI agent use this?

• "Is there a water restriction (arrêté sécheresse) in effect in Bordeaux right now?"
• "What are the concrete watering restrictions for this French postcode/commune?"
• "Compare drought severity between several French cities for a site-selection report."
• "Is agricultural irrigation restricted at this location, and since when?"
• "Give me the current groundwater monitoring stations near this French commune."
• "Which of these French locations are currently in the most severe restriction level (crise)?"

What this Actor does

• Accepts either a free-text address/place name (automatically geocoded) or a 5-digit INSEE commune code.
• Fetches the current restriction zone(s) for each location directly from VigiEau's official REST API — no scraping, no PDF parsing for the core status.
• Returns the severity level, zone type (surface water/groundwater), département, link to the official arrêté (decree) PDF, and the full list of concrete usage restrictions with who they apply to (individuals, businesses, municipalities, farms).
• Optionally includes nearby groundwater monitoring station metadata (Hub'Eau Piézométrie).

Input

Field	Type	Description
recherches	string[]	Each entry is either a 5-digit INSEE commune code (e.g. "75056") or a free-text address/place name (e.g. "Bordeaux"). Required.
includeRestrictions	boolean	Include the full list of concrete usage restrictions per zone. Default true.
includeEauxSouterraines	boolean	Also fetch nearby groundwater monitoring station metadata. Default false.
maxStationsEauxSouterrainesParRecherche	integer	Max groundwater stations per location (1-20). Default 5.
maxResults	integer	Maximum total records across all locations (1-2000). Default 500.

Location precision and source failures

Use a complete address for site-specific restrictions. A place name is geocoded to one point, not a survey of the entire commune. A five-digit input is interpreted as an INSEE code, not a postcode.

If VigiEau returns HTTP 409, the commune intersects multiple alert zones of the same type. The Actor asks for a complete address in WARNINGS; it never silently substitutes a commune centre or reports a restriction level for the entire commune.

Hub'Eau is fetched independently when enabled and the commune is known, even if VigiEau fails, subject to the shared maxResults limit. Partial results are retained and source failures are logged and saved in WARNINGS. If every restriction/station lookup fails (including unresolved locations), the run fails instead of reporting an empty success. A successful source response with no matches is not treated as a failure. Run success can therefore represent partial source success; always inspect WARNINGS.

Output

One flat JSON record per matched restriction zone. Field values and content are in French — this Actor's audience reads French, not Dutch or English, for the substantive fields:

{
  "land": "FR",
  "tipo": "zone",
  "recherche": "Bordeaux",
  "inseeCode": "33063",
  "zoneCode": "75_33_32",
  "nomZone": "ZA Jalle de Blanquefort",
  "typeZone": "SUP",
  "niveauGravite": "alerte_renforcee",
  "departement": "33",
  "restrictions": [
    {
      "nom": "Arrosage des jardins potagers y compris serres non agricoles",
      "thematique": "Arroser",
      "description": "Interdiction de 8h à 20h.",
      "concerneParticulier": true,
      "concerneEntreprise": true,
      "concerneCollectivite": true,
      "concerneExploitation": false
    }
  ],
  "arreteUrl": "https://.../AP-secheresse-16-07-26.pdf",
  "arreteKaderUrl": "https://.../ACD-...pdf",
  "bronDatum": "2026-07-17",
  "arreteFinValidite": null,
  "bronUrl": "https://api.vigieau.beta.gouv.fr/api/zones?lat=44.85&lon=-0.59",
  "datumOpgehaald": "2026-07-19T08:00:00.000Z"
}

When includeEauxSouterraines is enabled, additional records with "tipo": "station_piezometrique" are included (station code, name, département, coordinates).

A location can match more than one zone at once (e.g. a separate surface-water and groundwater zone) — each is returned as its own record.

Use cases

• Agricultural/insurance risk screening for French farms or irrigation-dependent businesses.
• Compliance monitoring for industrial sites (ICPE) subject to water-use restrictions.
• Real estate due diligence on structurally water-stressed locations.
• Feeding a scheduled pipeline that alerts when a location's restriction level worsens.

Pricing

This Actor uses Apify's Pay-Per-Event (PPE) pricing model.

• Actor Start: $0.00005 (Apify default)
• zone-record: $0.004 per delivered restriction-zone record
• station-piezometrique-record: $0.002 per delivered groundwater station record (only when enabled)
• alerte-restriction-severe: $0.015 per zone record at the alerte_renforcee or crise severity level

Legal

Data sourced exclusively from official French government platforms: VigiEau (Ministère de la Transition écologique, Open Licence 2.0/Etalab) and Hub'Eau Piézométrie (BRGM/ADES). No personal data is stored — input addresses are only used to resolve a location, not retained as linked to any individual. This Actor reports the latest official restriction status; it does not provide legal advice or predict future restrictions.

FAQ

Q: What if my address doesn't geocode? A: The location is skipped and a warning is logged in the run — no incorrect data is produced.

Q: Can I use a postcode instead of an address? A: Yes, free-text input (address, place name, or postcode) is geocoded automatically. You can also pass an INSEE commune code directly to skip geocoding.

Q: Does this predict future droughts? A: No — only the latest officially published restriction status is reported.

Q: Why are the output field values (restrictions, thématique, etc.) in French rather than English? A: The people who actually read this data — French farmers, municipalities, ICPE operators, compliance teams — read French. Values are kept in French (matching VigiEau's own official terminology) rather than translated into a language they'd have to translate back.

Related Actors

• Spain Drought Monitor (es-sequia-monitor) — the Spanish counterpart of this Actor: monthly MITECO drought observatory status (sequía prolongada / escasez coyuntural) per demarcación, parsed from the official PDF, with Spanish field values.
• NL Water Levels Monitor — Dutch water-level and discharge data from Rijkswaterstaat waterbase, a comparable hydrology source for the Netherlands.

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Mots-clés : sécheresse France, restriction d'eau, VigiEau, arrêté sécheresse, niveau de gravité, zone d'alerte, pénurie d'eau, irrigation agricole, ICPE.

Keywords

france, drought, water-restriction, secheresse, vigieau, water-scarcity, agriculture-risk, insurance-risk, climate-risk, open-data, groundwater, hubeau

Changelog

0.3.0

• Clear French error when VigiEau returns HTTP 409 for a commune intersecting multiple alert zones of the same type — the run asks for a complete address instead of reporting a misleading "API unavailable".
• Hub'Eau groundwater stations are fetched independently when enabled, even if the VigiEau lookup fails.
• A run in which every lookup fails now fails instead of reporting an empty success; successful responses with no matches are still a success. Source failures are logged in WARNINGS.
• Published example tasks now use complete street addresses instead of bare commune codes.
• Example/Console dataset table columns fixed (recherche, nomZone instead of removed field names).

0.2.0

• Renamed output/input fields from Dutch to French (e.g. restricties→restrictions, naam→nom, geldtVoorX→concerneX, grondwaterstation→station_piezometrique, locaties→recherches) — this Actor's audience reads French, not Dutch. Fixed a Spanish word ("escasez") that had accidentally ended up in the French keywords line.

0.1.0

• Initial release: VigiEau restriction zone status (severity + usage restrictions) per address or INSEE code, with an optional Hub'Eau groundwater monitoring station layer.