TIGER-NET works closely together with water authorities in a number of selected countries and regions with particular attention to major trans-boundary basins in Africa.
The high level objectives of the project were the following:
- Development of a water observation and information system for monitoring, assessing and inventorying water resources in a cost-effective manner by EO data
- Capacity building and training of African water authorities to fully exploit the observation capacity offered by the next generation of satellites, such as the upcoming Sentinel missions.
The first phase of TIGER-NET was focused on an extensive consultation, review and analysis of the user needs in terms of their current technological and human capacity, application specific monitoring demands as well as geo-information and system needs. In general, the common requirement was for an end-to-end system enabling a full capacity to establish water related information for monitoring, analysis and reporting (Map and Tabular) per sub-watershed for IWRM. While the system requirements have found to be very common among the host institutions, the specific application requirements and information demands varied according to the variety of IWRM challenges faced in the different water basins of Africa.
System requirements
- Cost and license free – Open Source
- Easily transferable – Easy to operate
- Capable of
- retrieving, storing and processing EO satellite data as well as integrating in-situ data
- producing EO-based water related information products
- integrating hydrological modeling functions
- supporting decisions based on full GIS framework
- mapping and reporting functionality
- integrating and linking to existing user systems
- scaling up for future applications and demands
- supporting the full observational capacity of the upcoming Sentinels
EO product requirements
- High to medium land cover, change and degradation mapping (incl. vegetation indices)
- Water body mapping (small/large, shoreline changes, wetlands)
- Water quality monitoring (lake surface temperature, chlorophyll and sediment load)
- Hydrological monitoring (precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, water level)
- Hydrological modelling (scenario analysis and operational forecasting)
- Flood forecasting, monitoring, historical and vulnerability assessment
- Erosion potential mapping
- Urban sanitation planning support
In response to the system and EO product requirements a WOIS has been developed with the capacity to perform the required processing steps from the EO data to the final water information products.
