DrownBase™ contains records of all drowning deaths that have occurred in New Zealand’s waterways since 1 January 1980.​ DrownBase™ also records all water-related hospitalisations requiring a stay in hospital since 2003 and categorises them in a variety of ways.
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Drowning information is entered into DrownBase through information received from The New Zealand Police and The Coroners Court. A drowning can be recorded on the day the person died, or many months after the drowning.

‍Coronial inquiries take time
Every three months, we receive information from Coronial Services on deaths found by the coroner to be a provisional drowning. Final findings can, at times, be many months or years after the drowning incident. New or changing information over time means drowning numbers adjust. In early 2025, a full audit to reconcile all recorded drownings in DrownBase and drownings recorded in the National Coronial Information System database was completed. This work adjusted some annual drowning totals over the past 30 years.