Under the Foundation Spatial Data Framework, Geoscience Australia is custodian for national surface hydrology data. Geoscience Australia has aggregated data supplied from state and national jurisdictions to create the Surface Hydrology Regional Database. This data has been edge-matched across state borders, flow directed and topologically corrected to provide consistency across the country to represent the best available surface hydrology dataset.

The National Surface Hydrology Database is a selection of features from the regional database (previously referred to as 1:250,000 scale).