Catchment Hydrology Explorer for Water Stewards (CatchExp Platform)

We rely on access to water for so many important aspects of everyday life, for example: domestic water, food production, industrial production, transport, recreation, maintaining ecosystems, to name just a few. With increasing pressures on our water supplies from growing populations, climate changes and other factors, we need to continue to improve management of this precious resource if it is to remain a benefit to society.

Good water management requires a sound knowledge of how much is present under different seasonal conditions, as well as how we use it and the consequences of this use, or potential overuse. Quantifying the highs and lows of the natural variability of water around us traditionally requires many decades of measurements to provide enough information to predict future availability. Unfortunately, this depth of water knowledge is not available for much of the world, and with our increasingly globalised societies this has consequences for all of us.

Fortunately, improving international cooperation and a growing focus of water science on the global scale means that there are many recent developments that could be used to address this water knowledge gap. Scientists are developing increasingly accurate computer models of the global water cycle and proliferating satellites are measuring water from space in ever more detail. However, many people with a role in water management are not trained experts in either computer models or satellite data, limiting the value of this new data to everyday water challenges.

This project will take the best data available from these exciting new science outputs, test it and make it available to all in an easy to use, online web map platform that will provide important water information anywhere in the world. Potential users of the platform will be involved at every stage of its development, ensuring it is directly useful and understandable. The easy to use platform will allow any user to get an independent, local estimate, of the range of water availability in their locality and help them understand the implications of the use of water as a resource, whether that is for irrigating crops, water for domestic supply or any other use.

The project will also test the outputs of the platform for the Breede region of South Africa, where multiple, sometimes competing uses, of local water resources presents a challenge for fair access. An existing water stewardship project in the area, run by WWF-SA, has mobilised people and organisations with a direct interest in the fair management of water and they will be engaged in the local testing and improvement of the platform.

The platform will be developed jointly by water@leeds scientists from the University of Leeds and the Earthwatch Institute, an international environmental charity with a track record of citizen involvement in global water science and the development of online platforms. Local South African expertise in water will be provided by Rhodes University, ensuring local relevance in the testing of the platform.

The project will be guided by a number of key partners, WWF, Marks and Spencer, SSBN Ltd., as well as Richard Carter and Associates. The breadth of partners and their networks will ensure that a wide range of water issues will be represented, including; water risks to global food supply chains, environmental needs, and community water supply.

The impacts of making such data available to water managers will be substantial and far reaching for beneficiaries. For the Breede catchment localisation, for example, a better understanding of water risks to the business supply chain, such as for M&S, will allow active participation in mitigating these risks with their 83 suppliers there. Allowance for environmental needs, such as for the Prince Alfred Hamlet Meetgrond Wetlands will also result from better water data. The wider population (~350,000) will also benefit from better water management. While the localisation will focus on a South Africa context, the platform is global and therefore also usable directly in the other countries highlighted in the call; Kenya, Tanzania, India and Bangladesh. The localisation process will also explicitly consider relevant issues for these countries as well, even if localisation is not immediately applied there.

With a growing awareness of humans' impacts on natural water systems and a willingness to "do something about it", whether at a national, organisational or individual level, there are many local and global initiatives that are underway, particularly with the introduction of the recent UN Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately many of these worthy initiatives are struggling with obtaining even basic information about their catchments of interest and this hampers objective decision making and constructive debate. This project will enable many of these initiatives through access to key independent scientific information that they require, enhancing their progress and sustainability in tackling the sustainable management of water resources worldwide.