This aim of this dataset is to represent water stress in the Black Sea catchment circa 2011. Water stress is calculated according to the Water Stress Index (WSI) corresponding to the quotient of total withdrawals by surface water availability, both in m3 yr-1. The scale of this index is as follow: <0.1 = No stress; 0.1 to 0.2 = Low; 0.2 to 0.4 = Moderate; 0.4 to 0.8 = High; >0.8 = Very high. Several building blocks used to assess water stress are also made available as geospatial layers in this dataset.