With the demand for such types of projects comes the need for data, information, knowledge management, and, in particular, people who fall under the broad category of water resources eng
Trang 1International Data Collection Daniel Zell
CONTENTS
2.1 Introduction 2-1 2.2 Data Sources 2-2 2.3 Case Studies 2-3 2.3.1 Latin America 2-3 2.3.2 Central Asia 2-4 2.3.3 South Asia 2-4 2.4 General Process for Data Collection 2-5 2.5 Internet Sources 2-5
In developing countries, dams, irrigation schemes,
watershed management plans, water and wastewater
systems, and flood mitigation works have grown in both
number and complexity Because these data intensive
approaches, such as river basin planning, are being
embraced worldwide and funded by multilateral and
bilateral organizations, the need for data has increased
China, for example, has undertaken massive water
resources projects on a scale never seen before, and
vast irrigation rehabilitation projects are underway in
Afghanistan In many Latin American countries, water
management projects are a top priority With the demand
for such types of projects comes the need for data,
information, knowledge management, and, in particular,
people who fall under the broad category of water
resources engineers This need is made sharper given the
imminent retirement of the seasoned professionals of the
post-WWII generation who have spent their lives in
water resources, leaving a younger, less experienced cohort of engineers to tackle the future
When, as often happens, engineers and other technical professionals in the water resources field are asked to render a technical judgment, they usually need a large set
of data to analyze the issue In the United States, general information such as precipitation, topography, stream-flow, and other related data is usually readily available from standard sources: previous studies are usually on-hand with the implementing agency, e.g., state government, military, and the private sector But some-times, data are harder to find, less reliable, maybe even lost This latter case is the normal starting point for water resources projects in less developed countries The engineer will have to invest a good deal of time, effort,
2-1
Trang 2and sometimes money to get the sort of data that are,
usually, freely available in developed countries This
chapter gives engineers an idea of what to expect, some
approaches to gathering data, and international internet
data sources
There has been and always will be a need for rapid
and complete data collection for water resources projects
in the developing world, a process made even more
challenging since data are fragmented among various
government and private organizations Due to both
varied organizational arrangements and cultural factors,
procedures for data collection vary from region to region
and country to country, and it is not possible within the
confines of this chapter to give a comprehensive
step-by-step method for accomplishing it Here, we present a
brief picture of the challenges of data collection through
some selected examples, an outline of a brief process,
and a listing of sources of data for international water
resources projects This chapter, then, will be most useful
for those with little experience in water resources
projects in developing nations
Now, before getting into the details, a few definitions
and explanations
1 Less developed countries is a term of
conveni-ence, generally meaning any country except the
United States, the former Soviet Union,
Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New
Zealand, and Japan But even though such a
simple dichotomy does not really exist—other
countries undoubtedly deserve to be considered
developed and may indeed boast superior data
repositories—this term, because of its
wide-spread acceptance, will be used throughout this
chapter
2 Engineer is defined here as a person responsible
for technical aspects of a water-related project
Although the engineer is normally an outsider
to the country or region under study and
perhaps initially unfamiliar with its cultural
norms and practices, he or she engineer
understands not only the data collection need
but also its intended application and eventual
output In some cases engineers will be
scientists, economists, even policymakers
The term, again, is chosen out of convenience
3 To make the chapter as useful as possible to the
widest audience, it generally refers to data in
the generic sense, rather than, for example,
average precipitation and uses illustrative
examples rather than an analytical examination
Without digressing too much into the world of
development economics, we note that the engineer needs
to understand the stage or level of development In
general, there is a positive correlation between wealth, or Gross Domestic Product per capita, and the centraliza-tion and quality of water resources data In Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, for example, where data sources are widely scattered, the results are incomplete, with much historical data, and studies lost in the warfare over the past few decades Climate also plays
a factor, as natural disasters, humidity, and even rodents often destroy hard copies in countries with limited computerized archives The overall lesson is that even in the relatively more developed countries of Central and South America, the engineer will need to search for secondary sources of data outside of the government, such as previous consultants’ reports, private water companies’ data, and others (see the list of websites at the end of this chapter) An outside engineer’s local contacts will be essential in setting appointments, identifying possible resources, and even collecting data themselves
But—a word of caution—it is unlikely that this task can be accomplished without the involvement of the engineer If you are not willing to travel to the country of assignment, then you should probably find somebody else to do the job Both the credibility and realism of the outputs will suffer from a lack of field presence Besides,
as an outsider, typically seen as immune to local politics and prejudices, the engineer who is willing to travel and spend enough time in country can surmount obstacles that an indigenous assistant could not
For general purposes, let us consider a simple dichotomy
in terms of data availability:
† Initial Conditions (given data), and
† Needs (data objectives)
Initial data may be given by your client or employer
or may be found through some cursory searching of the internet resources listed in this chapter Data needs or objectives depend on the particular assignment and will likely evolve throughout the problem solving process In any case, it is well worth taking the time to explore most,
if not all, of the websites listed at the end of the chapter with a high-speed internet connection You will spend much less time than trying to find data from alternate sources, such as government departments, previous and/or current projects, and well-known experts in the field And the websites listed are generally regarded as reliable
But website searches are not the only route I recommend a variety of methods, especially if the
Trang 3country and region are unfamiliar to the engineer.
Before arriving in a country, establish primary contacts
and introductions through the employer or client
Email, however convenient, is no substitute for phone
calls in building relationships These contacts may, if
sufficiently motivated, be in a much better position to
collect the required data Unfortunately, due primarily
to the long and frequently inconclusive history of most
local water resources projects with international
engineers, it will be a difficult task convincing someone
unknown to you, that your cause is worthwhile This is
yet another reason why you should use your in-country
network, even if it is only your employer or client, as a
foundation for collecting data The social ties and
relationships that locals have established are a resource
you should not ignore
A frequent issue when working in an unfamiliar
region and culture is payment How much do things cost?
From CAD and GIS operators, to internet usage, to maps,
most, if not all, goods and services have a value In my
experience, the issue is not whether or not to pay, but
rather, “what is the correct price?” This is not to say that
you can not get data for free; indeed, that is how I got
most of mine The engineer will have to rely on his or her
in-country network and awareness of local social norms
to determine whether or not a payment is required In
general, if work is required beyond normal hours or
duties, then a payment is more likely to be required
Another thing to be prepared for is equipment and
procedures that do not work Copiers, for example, are
usually broken because of a lack of basic supplies and/or
maintenance Or it may not exist or be available to
anyone except the senior staff Regulations may not let
you take records from the office for off-site duplication
Unless you have a penchant for data entry, this is another
case where it may be appropriate to pay the correct fee
for the data to be digitally entered I suggest offering an
electronic copy of the records by email to both the
department and data entry person By making them part
of the process, rather than a cog in a wheel, you may use
these people as resources for a long time to come, as I did
with a local hydrologist in Afghanistan months after my
return (It did, however, take much longer than expected
and required several phone calls and visits by contacts in
Afghanistan.)
The following case studies will give the engineer a
general perspective of the operational aspects of data
collection in a few developing nations Let me note at
once, however, the enormous importance of learning
about and paying attention to the unique cultures,
conditions, and particularly the values of each nation or region Ignoring them will imperil both the engineer and the project itself
Overall, although collecting water resources data in Latin America is like working in developing countries worldwide,* the relatively higher income in Latin America can make the work easier, as education level generally correlates with income Because hydropower is
a highly developed sector in Latin America, its organizations often have the best data However, the data are often considered proprietary and, being tightly controlled, take concerted and time-consuming effort by the engineer and local counterparts to get it
As in other regions, engineers should rely on their counterparts, local staff, or client by insisting that reasonable efforts be expended to gather data in advance Due to the culture of Latin America, counterparts can be relied on quite heavily, and will likely be highly competent In this manner, the engineer’s time can be best and efficiently used to address the remaining obstacles, like analyzing the data and writing reports Still, the engineer should be prepared to complete an assignment with much less data in both quantity and quality than is the norm in developed countries When no data are found for a specific basin, data for a similar region—in combination with field interviews, maps, and surveys—is used to build a model The uncertainties resulting from using such data should be plainly and simply stated in the engineer’s work
According to Dr Molina, the process of cleaning data—searching for errors—although time consuming and tedious, has repeatedly proved itself to be worth the trouble Common errors include converting units, converting gauge readings to flow, and a myriad of other possibilities These errors, if unchecked and corrected, will skew the results of an analysis On the other hand, careful advance planning can minimize delays, for example, by contracting a local firm or consultants to carefully screen the data for anomalies and enter it into a useful format
* According to a June 25, 2004, interview with Dr Medardo Molina, a Peruvian-born water resources expert who has been active in water resources since 1965 as an international consultant and professor Dr Molina has published numerous papers in both Spanish and English
Trang 42.3.2 Central Asia
In Afghanistan, collecting water resources data were
quite complicated, based on my personal experiences in
2003 What little historical data existed was
fragmen-ted and incomplete Thirty years of instability
destroyed critical records and the hydrological network
The language barrier, with data sometimes recorded in
Dari, Pashto, or Russian, further complicated data
collection
The assigned task—to construct a national water
balance and determine water availability for
rehabilita-ting irrigation—necessitated casrehabilita-ting a wide net to collect
all sources of data Before visiting Afghanistan, my
thorough search of libraries and databases yielded only
few results, but one of them, a previous water balance
study, was quite useful Although I made contacts in
advance, scheduling appointments from outside of
Afghanistan did not work I now understand that the
local custom is to pay a brief introductory visit,
without an appointment Then, a later appointment can
accomplished
This introductory visit may seem full of pleasantries
and even a bit useless To the novice it may seem not
along the critical path Quite to the contrary, the visits are
used to evaluate the engineer, to understand what the
engineer is doing, and to understand if the engineer is
worthy of help Besides, since data are rarely
immedi-ately available, the first meeting gives the local source
time to prepare
The team conducted initial and follow-up visits to the
following organizations:
Ministries: Irrigation and Water Resources and
Development, Agriculture and Animal
Husban-dry, and the Central Statistics Office
United Nations: Food and Agriculture
Organi-zation and World Food Program, in particular
the Vulnerability Analysis Mapping Unit for
socio-economic data, and the Development
Program
Others: ICARDA (International Center for
Agri-cultural Research in the Dry Areas), the U.S
Agency for International Development, and
various private consultants, firms, and
non-government organizations
From these and subsequent visits over a 12-month
period, the consultant team gathered the hydrological
station data We hired a local professional consultant to
both construct and digitize a map of the monitoring
stations More importantly, the team was able to
persuade a wide range of policy makers and water
resources professionals of the report’s thoroughness and usefulness by conducting follow-up visits to the data repositories, courtesy calls to government officials to
presentations
The United Nations’ organizations provided the most accurate satellite and agricultural data, and previous consultants’ reports were essential in constructing the overall water balance Although we still had to do careful fact checking based on the newly available data, the efforts of independent and knowledgeable local staff helped us get data not only more rapidly but also with a higher degree of reliability than would have otherwise been possible
It is important to note that the local staff’s efforts had to be supplemented with continual phone calls and emails by the consultants as well as periodic visits to Afghanistan As outsiders, foreign consultants can often bypass the social norms and traditions that hamper local staff At the same time, continued communication and visits let the team more completely understand the extent of the problem or issues to be addressed and more importantly, convey the engineers’ recommended solution to the client as it evolved This served two purposes:
1 By avoiding the “parachute in” approach where a consultant works rapidly and alone, often behind a closed door, the team won a sense of buy-in and respect from the client, which ensured that the client would actually understand the results of the work
2 By working hand-in-hand with a client who lacked basic institutional capacity, the con-sultant team was able to increase the client’s capacity to use the team’s results
With so many people interested in the report, the team decided to circulate a draft copy The resulting informal peer review process increased the credibility
of the findings, and although it led to a series of revisions, in the end, it was the only way to accomplish the task
In contrast to the situation in Afghanistan, data availability was relatively high during a 2004 assign-ment to the Indian State of Orissa At the state water resources agency, I saw many rooms with neatly bound papers stacked literally from floor to ceiling More remarkably, when motivated by the department head, almost everything we asked for was quickly found And because the information requested was relatively recent,
Trang 5we did not encounter the issue of deteriorating paper
records in a humid environment without climate
control The main problems were poor database design
and data entry, and resistance to improving quality
control standards
To make sure that our primary data on average daily
flow from reservoirs were accurate, my team went to one
of the more remote locations to look at primary records
This entailed a journey across the small rice paddies that
characterize the regions, a courtesy call to the local
supervisor, and even more driving to where the road
literally ended at the reservoir The water resources
department had told the reservoir about our trip, and the
records were ready However, local customs dictated a
long, slow, and quite good meal as well as an exchanging
of pleasantries before the ledger was produced Then, we
asked the data recorders how they recorded the gate
height and translated that measurement into a daily flow
Spot checking a few calculations for accuracy, we found
no mistakes
A universal issue when dealing with government
agencies is territorialism This issue nearly derailed the
entire project in India An agency insisted that a task
was within their realm of authority but showed neither
the will nor the capacity to perform the work as
required Rather the agency did the bare minimum and
strongly resisted any efforts at improvement The
lesson the engineer should take from this is that relying
on someone or some agency out of your control is
risky In hindsight, the solution would have been to
accept the agency as a partner, then help them, as
cooperatively and diligently as possible, to complete
the project
COLLECTION The following process serves as a guideline for engineers
unfamiliar with international water resources
engineer-ing It is highly likely that additional steps will be needed
in any actual project depending on the requirements and
country
1 Learn key features of the country’s culture
norms and values by both talking to someone
from the country and reading appropriate
articles and even the literature
2 Identify the problem
This step consists of more than simply reading
the terms of reference The engineer should
plan on conducting one-to-one discussions
with senior and mid-level staff at the local or
client agency
3 Identify data requirements
4 Identify local staff requirements such as cartographers, hydrologists, statisticians, field surveyors, etc
5 Contact the client or local agency
5.1 Contact made well in advance of the initial visit so that the staff are aware
of the planned work and can plan accordingly
5.2 Contact at regular intervals, at least weekly Contact by phone and email is recommended
6 Make initial visit
Prearranged visits with organizations should
be conducted Social outings, while exhaust-ing, may prove useful for particularly difficult data collection situations
7 Collect the data
8 Review data collected
Determine what steps need to be taken to ensure the data are both accurate and in a usable format
9 Conduct field validation if required
10 Make more visits
These visits will supplement initial data gatherings and present initial findings
11 Perform analysis
12 Prepare and circulate draft report
13 Incorporate comments as appropriate
14 Prepare report
The following addresses give access to a lot of data The descriptions of the 2006 websites come directly from the web pages themselves
Organization’s (FAO) global information system of water and agriculture developed by the Land and Water Development Division of FAO AQUASTAT is FAO’s global information system of water and agriculture developed by the Land and Water Development Division of FAO The objective of AQUASTAT is to provide users with comprehensive information on the state of agricultural water management across the world, with emphasis on developing countries and
FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGL/AGLW/aquastat/main/ index.stm)
The following is an excerpt from the AQUASTAT country profile of Afghanistan
Trang 6The tables above are an example of the output
produced by FAO STAT, in this case rural and urban
populations in African Developing Nations from 1993 to
2003 The output is also available in csv format
GRDC (Global Runoff Data Center) The GRDC makes the unique offer to the international research and science community of easy and universal access to river flow information on a global scale On request, data
faostat.fao.org/default.jsp?languageZEN
Year
Population-estimates
rural (1000)
Population-estimates
urban (1000)
Water Resources
Based on the hydrographic systems, the country can be divided into four zones:
† the northern basin (24% of the territory) with the Amu Darya and its tributaries (14%), which drain toward the Aral sea, and the rivers of northern Afghanistan (10%), which disappear within the country before joining the Amu Darya;
† the western region (12%) consisting of the Hari Rud river basin (6%) and the Murgab river basin (6%), both rivers disappearing in Turkmenistan;
† the south-western basin (52%) with the Helmand river flowing toward the Sistan swamps, located on the border of Iran and Afghanistan In 1972, a document was signed between Afghanistan and Iran to allocate a discharge of 26 m/s of Helmand river water to Iran all year round;
† the eastern Kabul basin (12%), which is the only river system having an outlet to the sea, joining the Indus at Attock in Pakistan
Internal renewable water resources are estimated at 55 km3yrK1 The Kunar river, which originates in Pakistan, crosses the border with an average annual flow of 10 km3and joins the Kabul river at Jalalabad about 180 km further downstream The Kabul river flows again into Pakistan 80 km further downstream
Total water withdrawal was estimated at 26.11 km3in 1987, of which 99% for agricultural purposes Recently, there has been a large development of groundwater use in some provinces
In 1986, there were two dams higher than 15 m The installed capacity of the hydroelectric plants was 281 MW in 1992, which
is about 70% of total installed capacity There is considerable potential for the generation of hydropower, by both large dams and microhydropower stations
FAOSTAT is an on-line and multilingual database
currently containing over 3 million time-series
records covering international statistics in the following areas:
Trang 7products are developed and specialized databases are
assembled for projects on both regional and global scale
The GRDC serves as a communication platform between
institutions, advisors, and scientists and also transfers
information about other relevant databases with a
hydrological content such as the Global Precipitation
Climatology Centre (GPCC) and the Programme Office of
the Global Environment Monitoring System—Water
(GWPO) of UNEP It also maintains close ties to the
UNESCO Water project “Flow Regimes from
Inter-national Experimental and Network Data” (FRIEND)
The GRDC contains long-term mean annual freshwater surface water fluxes into the world oceans Estimates are based on 251 discharge stations of major rivers Data available include mean, minimum, maximum monthly discharges, and time series of mean, minimum, maximum annual discharge for 3035 stations UNH-GRDC Global Composite Runoff Fields combines observed river discharge information with a climate-driven Water Balance Model (http:// grdc.bafg.de)
The following is a sample output:
Trang 8CGIAR is a global link to research on agriculture,
hunger, poverty, and the environment CGIAR
(Consulta-tive Group on International Agricultural Research) is a
good starting point for international water issues related to
agriculture (www.cigar.org)
To access any of CGIARs publications published by
the 15 research centers, go to the CGIAR Library
Gateway (www.cgiar.org/publications/library/index
html)
CGIAR Reefbase—ReefBase is the world’s premier
online information system on coral reefs, and provides
information services to coral reef professionals involved
in management, research, monitoring, conservation, and
education Its goal is to facilitate sustainable
manage-ment of coral reefs and related coastal/marine
environ-ments, in order to benefit poor people in developing
countries whose livelihoods depend on these natural
resources ReefBase’s Online Geographic Information
System (GIS) allows you to display coral reef related
data and information on interactive maps You can zoom,
search, and query datalayers, and save or bookmark the
map (www.reefbase.org)
ICARDA (International Center for Research in the
Dry Areas) is one of the research centers of CGIAR,
whose mission is to improve and integrate the
manage-ment of soil, water, nutrients, plants, and animals in ways
that optimize sustainable agricultural production There
are many relevant articles, publications, and datasets on
on-farm water use and water efficiency (www.icarda
cgiar.org)
IWMI’s (International Water Management Institute)
on-line publication section contains several thousand
pages of peer reviewed research on water management
All research outputs and publications produced by IWMI
are international public goods, freely available to
partners in developing countries and to members of the
international development, academic and research
com-munities (www.iwmi.cgiar.org/pubs/mindex.htm)
The Remote Sensing and GIS Unit (RS GIS Unit)
of the International Water Management Institute
(IWMI), is a centralized facility for all spatial
data-related activities of IWMI at the headquarters in Sri
Lanka and Regional Offices located in different parts
of the world
Currently, the RS GIS Unit holds over 1 terabyte of
data Although the emphasis is on IWMI benchmark
river basins, large volumes of data are also available at
National, Regional, and Global levels These data are
catalogued, streamlined, and released to the public
through the IWMI Data Storehouse Pathway (DSP)
Much of the river basin and other datasets are composed
as single mega files of hundreds or sometimes thousands
of bands consisting of continuous streams of 8-day or monthly time series data in several wavebands and/or indices
Large volumes of multitemporal data from multiple satellite sensors are used in several IWMI research projects These projects include: (a) Global Irrigated Area Mapping (GIAM) at global to local scales, (b) the Wetland project in the Limpopo river basin of four Southern African Nations, (c) the Krishna river basin project in India, (d) the Indo-Gangetic river basin project
in India and Pakistan, (e) the Drought Assessment and Mitigation project in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India, and (f) the biodiversity project in Sri Lanka More information on the RS GIS Unit and its activities can be found in several areas of this web site (www.iwmidsp.org/iwmi/info/centerprofile.asp) Hydrological Processes is a relevant international journal with abstracts freely accessible on the web Of particular interest are the past articles on mathematical and methodological aspects of hydrological processes and modeling
interscience.wiley.com)
Although traditionally thought of as a repository of United States data sets only, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a notably thorough database on selected countries that will likely grow over time In particular, datasets for Jordan and Israel can be found through their project websites (www.watercare.org and
www.exact-me.org)
Also on USGS, a general homepage with linkages to Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, and Cyprus (international.usgs.gov/disciplines/water.htm)
Winrock Water is both a discussion forum and data clearinghouse that includes an annotated bibliography Winrock water has selected leading reference materials, research and discussions of major issues in the water resources field through the internet The links section is
of particular interest to those in data collection (www winrockwater.org)
Sakia.org is an information and communication service in the area of “land and water” Sakia.org hosts several services such as the email discussion list IRRIGATION-L the WWW Virtual Library Irrigation
& Hydrology (content filling stage), the WWW Database
on Irrigation & Hydrology Software—IRRISOFT (under revision), the e-Journal of Land and Water, an open access and peer reviewed international scientific journal for research and developments and the Journal of Applied Irrigation Science Sakia.org is fostering the open and free access to knowledge in support of the “land and water” community (www.sakia.org)