Page 42 - CIWA Water Data Revolution Overview Report

1 Summary

Adequate management and allocation of water resources play a critical role in addressing major
development challenges throughout Africa, including supporting agricultural production,
addressing issues of food security, and reducing conflict and displacements. Collaborative
management of transboundary water resources is essential in order to address cross-cutting
issues influencing water decisions, such as climate change, fragility, violence, gender equality,
social inclusion, human capital, and economic development. As a result, improved management
of water resources and increased resilience to hydrological extremes across Africa requires
understanding water resource dynamics at the basin level to ensure equitable and efficient use
of the transboundary resource. To understand this problem, data and observations are a
prerequisite for gaining better insight into the complex dynamics. However, hydrometeorological
monitoring networks in Africa are often sparse, have large latency and encounter challenges with
reliability, making them impractical and unreliable for real‐time decision making. Moreover, the
use of ground data for management of transboundary resources in Africa is complicated by
insufficient quality control standards for data collection and management which is further
compounded by a lack of data sharing practices as they pertain to shared resources among
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riparian countries. The use of remotely sensed (RS) data acquired from satellites can help to
address many of these concerns by collecting high-resolution data at regular intervals which can
be used to inform policy-making in real time, while ensuring the data are made available in an
open-source manner to all participating countries.

RS data is a continuous, reliable data source which can be used to cover vast amounts of land
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otherwise challenging to assess, which can then be used as an input into analytical tools for
cross-border water applications, such as flood forecasting, monitoring of surface water quality,
tracking of water diversions and allocations, and quantification of water storage in reservoirs.
Satellite-derived data is also advantageous technically because instrumentation does not vary
across border, often requires less frequent maintenance practices and less likely to be disrupted
by on-ground events. This data collection approach is also politically advantageous due to
enhanced data transparency which facilitates cross-boundary discussion. There are many free or
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low-cost data products which facilitate the collection, storage, and analysis of RS data. River and
basin organizations across Africa can use these data products to translate RS data to enhance
decision-making and to strengthen data exchange among riparian countries. However, many
decision-makers lack the tools with which to access and adapt these products to provide
solutions at the scale they need.

Therefore, the Cooperation in International Waters in Africa (CIWA) and World Bank supported
Water Data Revolution (WDR): Closing the Data Gap for Transboundary Water in Africa project

1 RS data refers to space-based, remotely-sensed data (also known as earth observation data).
2 Analytical tools refers to tools designed to analyze data to achieve specific objectives relevant for WRM (for example, flood forecasting).
3 Data products refers to platforms, tools, or programs designed to collect, store, manage, and/or analyze data (for example, Google Earth Engine).
Data products often transform raw RS data into an analysis-ready format. Data used in data products may be from remote sensing or
other data sources (such as gauges or ground-based observations).
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