Online prediction of water availability

The future development of many countries worldwide depends on the sustainable use of water. Here, reliable forecasts can help local decision-makers. New methods for predicting seasonal water availability in semi-arid regions are being developed by a consortium with Tractebel’s participation. The contracting entity is the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Some two years after the start of the project, Tractebel’s experts are taking positive stock: The successful cooperation has resulted in a first prototype for online forecasts.

Apart from Tractebel, seven universities and institutes as well as various local decision-makers are involved in the project “Seasonal water resources management – transfer of regionalised global information to practice (SaWaM)”. They aim to complete their joint work in 2020.

The water experts have already solved their first task by having developed new programs and methods for processing global weather data for the semi-arid study areas in Africa, Asia and South America. To this end, Tractebel’s engineers collaborated with researchers from the fields of climate, hydrological, sediment and ecosystem sciences.

First version of a prototype

In the next step, the team will develop an online prototype that takes into account the individual needs of regional decision-makers and makes forecasts using the new methods. The aim is to mitigate the harmful impact of climate change on water resources.

Midway through the project’s lifecycle, the desired methods have been developed and will now be validated. For this purpose, the experts analysed extensive data, including the forecast data of the global climate model by the European Centre for Medium-Term Weather Forecasts (ECMWF SEAS5) as well as local hydrological and meteorological measurements. The first version of the online prototype has already been created and is now being coordinated both internally and with the stakeholders. 

Engineers and scientists from various disciplines develop forecasting methods for the seasonal water availability.