Page 58 - CIWA Water Data Revolution Overview Report

for WRM. There was also overlap in organizations using RS for land use/land cover (LULC)
assessments, groundwater assessments, and rainfall forecasting. Lastly, at least one organization
used RS for rainfall – runoff modeling; ecosystem accounting; and wetlands monitoring.

Wetlands monitoring

Ecosystem accounting
Rainfall-runoff modeling
Rainfall forecasting

Groundwater assessment
Land use / land cover assessment

Water allocation for dam operations
Water allocation for WRM
Basin monitoring and planning

Drought monitoring and forecast
Flood monitoring and early warning

0 1 2 3
No. of Organizations

Figure 5: Primary use of the collected RS data by the organizations.

The highly reported usage of RS for collection of at least one type of data indicates strong
potential to further expand the current use. When asked about data collection practices, many
organizations stated in their interviews that they rarely collected, or had not officially started
collecting, RS data. Although this leads to ambiguity in the current usage rates, this existing
familiarity with RS can be leveraged through trainings to increase the quantity of data used by
the organizations. Moreover, some organizations are already using RS data and information
systems to perform essential water management operations, such as flood and drought
assessments, tracking of water allocations, and basin monitoring. This prior knowledge of using
RS for water management applications can be harnessed to improve data-informed decision
making by expanding the types of RS data organizations are able to work with within specific
analytical tools. This can be accomplished through trainings on acquiring, managing, and storing
various free or low-cost RS datasets.

7.2 Use of Data Products

Of the 18 organizations in this assessment, data products are reportedly used by 16. Only one
organization stated they did not use data products, indicating that the use of data products is
commonplace among RBOs and ROs. To evaluate if organizations are aware of data products

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