Water from Space: Real World Opportunities and Far Away Promises

Abstract:

A Global Initiative on Remote Sensing for Water Resources Management (Water RS) was launched in October 2013, financed by the World Bank’s Water Partnership Program (WPP[1]) of the Global Water Program. It aims, among other things, to put together and disseminate, in collaboration with the Bank’s operational staff as well as external partners, a clear picture of the potential role of Earth Observations (EO) in solution approaches to address particular water-related issues.

The initiative focuses on the accuracy, reliability, and validity of the EO products to be used by decision makers in water related management and planning contexts. To make informed decisions, the client needs to know about the potential and the limitations of practical application of remote sensing technology and products, through informed recommendations and the development of practical, result-oriented tools. Thus, the objective of the Water RS initiative is to address this issue by taking a two-phase approach focusing respectively on: (i) identifying demand and priorities of the users while raising awareness on the potential and limitation of RS tools and (ii) bridging the gap between science and development of operational projects.

While the first phase has come to completion, the second phase is being designed to tackle some of the reasons why there have been rather limited applications in the developing world (World Bank clients), such as: incentive issues, implementation capacity, costs and financing, and the overall issue of “How to do it?. An overview of the initiative and the lessons learned to date will be presented, setting the stage for muti-partner discussions.

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[1] The Water Partnership Program (WPP) is a longstanding alliance between the World Bank and the governments of the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Austria.