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SERVIR "SWAAT" team helping water resource managers in Africa

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With floods and droughts as two of the most catastrophic natural disasters in the regions it serves, SERVIR strives to be on the cutting edge in addressing challenges related to water. Decision-makers around the world need tools and data for predicting floods and droughts as well as for monitoring the availability of water in support of food security, livelihoods, energy, and more. They also need information to plan for future impacts of a changing climate.

Participants at the SWAAT workshop at RCMRD
Workshop attendees  

SERVIR Applied Sciences Team members Juan Valdes, Aleix Serrat-Capdevila, and Matej Durcik (University of Arizona) and their colleagues, aka the SERVIR Water Africa-Arizona Team, or SWAAT, have developed a state-of-the-art tool for forecasting streamflow and the availability of water. On 23 March 2016, the team hosted a workshop called Real-time Streamflow Forecasting in African Basins at the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) in Nairobi, Kenya. The purpose of the event was to explain their novel methods and teach participants how to use this new tool.

The SWAAT forecasting framework provides forecasts for three time frames: (1) near real-time monitoring and short term forecasting – 10 days ahead; (2) seasonal forecasting – six months ahead; and (3) climate change impacts assessment – up to 2100. For near real-time monitoring and short term forecasting, rainfall estimates from the most recent satellite observations and near-term weather forecasts are used as inputs to hydrologic rainfall-runoff models to provide publicly available [experimental] streamflow forecasts with a lead time of 7 to 10 days.

“We developed an innovative method for providing uncertainty intervals [valid possible ranges, based on historical data, for streamflow] to the forecasts by looking at different combinations of satellite precipitation products and rainfall-runoff models,” explains Valdes.

To simplify the process for the end-user, the team also created a merged streamflow forecast product based on the various combinations. SWAAT is providing all of these streamflow forecasts in three pilot basins in Africa: the Mara Basin in Kenya and Tanzania, the upper Zambezi River, and the Tekezé River Basin in Ethiopia. The seasonal forecasting application has also been implemented in the Upper Zambezi Basin. And the team is using the developed hydrologic models in the pilot basins to estimate future climate change impacts on regional water resources during the current century (2012-2100).*

Precipitation example screenshot
Example of bias-corrected precipitation shown in Mara Basin website 
(http://forecast.rcmrd.org/rainfall_mara.html or 
http://www.swaat.arizona.edu/rainfall_mara.html)  

The team has developed a project website to display and access the monitoring and forecasting results and related information. The site provides the near real-time streamflow forecasts for the pilot basins and their main sub-watersheds. It also features displays of recent rainfall over the basins as captured by different satellite precipitation products. These near real-time displays of precipitation are bias-corrected and downscaled (improved in terms of accuracy and resolution) using the CHIRPS** product, a 30-year record of rainfall that integrates satellite estimates and available rain gauges in the region, offering a rainfall product at 0.05 degrees spatial resolution.

The first prototype for streamflow forecasting and the website to display the results have been transferred to RCMRD, and forecasts are operational at http://forecast.rcmrd.org [link is no longer available].

Valdes calls these activities and the training workshop “great first steps in the transfer of the final applications and tools and in building capacity within the RCMRD center staff.”

SWAAT is striving to ensure that the final products--such as near-real time streamflow forecasts--are readily available to end-user communities and the public. Valdes notes that the final applications and products “will be informed by interactions among RCMRD, SERVIR, and regional end-users such as the Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA), Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), Mau Mara Serengeti (MaMaSe) Sustainable Water Initiative, PREPARED, and others in the SERVIR-Eastern and Southern Africa region as well as in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and Ethiopia.”

The team has already been working with such water management agencies and stakeholders to tailor their monitoring and forecasting tools to identify deficiencies and needs and accommodate a variety of end-users. For example, in basins with reservoirs, streamflow forecasts will provide information on water availability for both energy production and competing downstream uses such as irrigated agriculture, flood recession agriculture, and urban supply. For small water courses, water availability estimates support critical tracking of dwindling resources during dry season, so officials in charge of food and livelihood security in rural populations can make knowledgeable decisions for mitigating the situation.

As another example, the focus in the Mara Basin in Kenya and Tanzania is on balancing water allocation among users and the environment, as well as on monitoring low flows during the dry seasons. Monitoring and forecasting low flows there is important in terms of implications for wildlife migration. The Great Migration in the Mara Basin is one of nature’s most impressive displays and an important tourist attraction.

Participants from WRMA, KIWASH and MaMaSe
In foreground: Kipruto Zacchaeus Kemboi, hydrologist from WRMA’s Surface Water 
Department-Kericho; Speaking: Jacob Ochieng’, Environment and Climate Change 
Specialist from USAID/Kenya Integrated Water Sanitation and Hygiene Project 
(KIWASH); In back: Anne Siema, from the MaMaSe project, Kericho  

Participants from organizations such as WRMA and MaMaSe expressed great interest in the innovative methods and applications demonstrated at the workshop. They asked for streamflow forecasts in additional locations of the Mara Basin and other basins of concern in Kenya. SWAAT and RCMRD are working with them to address these requests.

Notes

RCMRD is the SERVIR-Eastern & Southern Africa partner organization.

The activities describe herein are a collaborative effort between the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona, the SERVIR Program of NASA and USAID, and the International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management- United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICIWaRM-UNESCO).

Attendees were from the Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA), Kenya Department of Water Resources, Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), Mau Mara Serengeti (MaMaSe) Sustainable Water Initiative, Planning for Resilience in East Africa Through Policy, Adaptation, Research, and Economic Development (PREPARED) project, the Wildlife Conservancies, USAID, Oxford University, Kenyatta University, local consulting firms, and RCMRD.

In addition to providing SWAAT framework training, the workshop introduced participants to the SWAAT website so they could discuss their preferences about results content and displays. The workshop also allowed the team to gather insights on how the monitoring and forecasting tools will be put to use by different end-users and workshop participants. And finally, it provided a venue for discussing synergies with other ongoing projects and opportunities for collaboration with RCMRD, WRMA, KMD, and UNESCO-IHE (Institute for Hydraulic Engineering) activities.

*They are incorporating long term climate projections by another SERVIR AST member, Pete Robertson. 
See http://catalogue.servirglobal.net/Product?product_id=19 .

**CHIRPS stands for Climate Hazards group IR Precipitation with Stations. Scientists at Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) who are members of the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team used 30 years’ (1982- present) worth of multiple satellite data sources and ground observations to produce an unprecedented, global, spatially and temporally consistent and continuous 30-year record of satellite-derived rainfall data. This CHIRPS global dataset makes it possible to accurately assess and monitor large-scale rainfall patterns and analyze how they may be affected by climate change. The data are updated to the latest available rainfall estimates.

The near real time streamflow forecasts (for now experimental and not operational) as well as the latest precipitation over the pilot basins can be found at www.swaat.arizona.edu.

See photos of the event: https://flic.kr/s/aHskwQCBik