How open data supports water management
Publication Date/Time
2021-08-30T06:00:00+00:00
Country
Europe
Showcasing European water info applications
THIS SUMMER, SEVERE FLOODS HAVE AFFECTED SEVERAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

In early July, several countries in Europe have witnessed severe
floods, causing serious damage. Multiple river basins in
Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, and Switzerland, for which is common practice to
store water and control the risk of floods, overflowed.  Water poured
out onto roads, villages, and cities. Germany and Belgium were hit
particularly hard, with power outages, evacuations, and damage to
infrastructure and agriculture. The Belgian Minister of Home
Affairs, Annelies Verlinden, defined the events as_ "one of the
greatest natural disasters our country has ever known" _in a recent
Brussels Times article
[https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/178091/this-is-one-of-the-greatest-natural-disasters-belgium-has-ever-known-says-verlinden/]. _  _

OPEN DATA CAN SUPPORT WATER MANAGEMENT AND RESPONSE EFFORTS

As the affected countries regroup and examine the reasons of what
happened, the opportunities for a better use of data in managing water
are being considered.  This resource can provide evidence to
decision-makers when a flood is imminent, providing tactical
information to implement preventative measures or decide whether
evacuations are necessary. Data is also instrumental to more strategic
water management planning, as weather and water historical data drive
decisions of urban and landscape planning, such as choosing to change
the route of a river, the height of its margins, the depth of its bed.
Furthermore, data can be used to support response operations during
the incident, and to inform rebuilding in the aftermath.

According to Monique Kuglitsch
[https://aiforgood.itu.int/using-ai-to-better-understand-natural-hazards-and-disasters/],
Innovation Manager at Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut,
"high-quality data are the foundation for understanding natural
hazards and their underlying mechanisms” and help build models that
monitor and predict these types of events.

Below, you can find a few examples of applications of data that
support strategic water management as well as response efforts.

THE DUTCH APPLICATION _WATERINFO_ PROVIDES WATER, AIR, AND WIND DATA
ON A MAP INTERFACE

With a large part of the country and most big cities at or below sea
level, the Dutch government needed to learn how to manage water
effectively and have become internationally recognised experts at it.
The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (RWS) is the
government body that deals with water and infrastructure management
and provides timely and accurate water, wind, and air data. The water
data website
[https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/water/waterdata-en-waterberichtgeving/waterdata],
developed by RWS, offers information on water levels, drainage,
temperatures, flow rates, wave heights, tides, salinity, and water
quality.  These data are used to inform other government bodies,
local administrations, but also the general public.

To make all of this information accessible and easy-to-understand in a
single overview, the RWS has also created _Waterinfo_
[https://waterinfo.rws.nl/]. With this web-application, you can find
current, expected, and historical data on national bodies of water,
including rivers, seas, and lakes. Aside from consulting the data on a
map, you can also get an overview of all data organised in a table or
visualised in a graph, which can be exported to machine-readable
formats.

_Waterinfo_ provides information for citizens but also for water
management professionals and experts. For a first intuitive
understanding, the map offers color-coded indicators that show if the
values are safe or alarming. On the expert maps, these color-codes are
absent, and more technical indicators are visible, including the
presence of chemicals and water quantity measures.
 
 

IN GERMANY, A SIMILAR WATER MANAGEMENT TOOL EXISTS:
_HOCHWASSER-PORTAL_

In Germany, a similar application for managing water levels exists,
the Hochwasser-portal [https://www.hochwasserzentralen.de/].
Hochwasser-portal is operated jointly by the country’s federal
states. The Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV) and
each participating state supply current water levels and flood warning
levels. You can monitor the levels of all main waterways in the
country and monitor weather warnings and precipitation. Clicking on
the individual states takes you to the respective state’s portal,
however it is not always intuitive to obtain the underlying datasets,
and to verify that they were issued under an open licence. Navigate
through the portal to check the current water situation across
Germany.
 
 

OPEN DATA INFORMS RESPONSE EFFORTS ACROSS COUNTRIES WITH THE UN’S
_HUMANITARIAN DATA EXCHANGE_

Data can also inform the time-critical actions required by the
response forces. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) [https://www.unocha.org/] for instance,
operates a data portal specific to this purpose, the _Humanitarian
Data Exchange (HDX)_ [https://data.humdata.org/]. The UN’s ambition
is to offer the response forces data that they can use in real-time to
manage operation, prioritise intervention, and provide support to the
most individuals, and the ones in most pressing needs.

For example, users can find on HDX the data
[https://data.humdata.org/dataset/ethiopia-flooding-somali-region]
that the UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT)
produced from satellite analysis on occasion of the Somali region
flooding in May 2018. The data describes the 9,200 ha of land that
were inundated and enabled to estimate that 12,000 people were
affected.
 

 
 

THE RE-USE OF OPEN DATA HELPS MANAGE WATER AND SUPPORTS RESPONSE
EFFORTS

These three initiatives are prime examples of open data applications
that truly show the potential of open data. _Waterinfo_ and
_Hochwasser-portal_ help water management professionals monitor water
levels with just a glance. This type of information is usually
fragmented and getting an overview of the current situation nationwide
takes time. Having direct access to accurate and up-to-date
information makes it possible to respond much quicker and more
effectively. When a situation unfortunately does escalate, initiatives
like the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) help to coordinate
intervention and support for those in need

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