The Global Network on Water and Development Information for Arid Lands (G-WADI) celebrated a decade of achievements with an international conference entitled “G-WADI: More than a decade enhancing water and sustainable development for arid regions”. The meeting took place on 25-27 October 2016 in Beijing, China.

From 11-20 July 2016 in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, a training course was held on “Application of Satellite Remote Sensing to Support Water Resources Management in Latin America and the Caribbean”. The course was organized locally by the International Hydroinformatics Center, a bi-national (Paraguay and Brazil) UNESCO category 2 center hosted by Itaipú Binacional.

On February 17th – 18th, 2016 in Khartoum, Sudan, G-WADI held a Training Workshop on “Advances in Water Resources Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Areas: A G-WADI approach”. The workshop was organized by the Water Research Centre of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Khartoum, in collaboration with the Regional Centre on Capacity Development and Research on Water Harvesting (RCWH) and the Sudanese National Commission for UNESCO.

All of Namibia’s perennial rivers are border rivers and have their origin outside of the country. In the northeast, the Kunene, Kavango and Kwando Rivers originate in Angola, and the Zambezi River in Zambia; while in the south, the Orange River originates in Lesotho. Water resources planning, and emergency preparedness for floods and droughts, requires information on upstream conditions of these rivers.

Experts from the Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing (CHRS), at the University of California Irvine, participated and instructed in a capacity building workshop in Bangkok, Thailand. Professor Kuolin Hsu and postdoctoral scholar Phu D. Nguyen trained participants on the use of the PERSIANN satellite precipitation product for rainfall monitoring applications.

The Sub-Saharan regional network of UNESCO IHP’s G- WADI programme met in Windhoek, Namibia from May 18-20. The meeting had two themes: continued expansion of the African Drought Early Warning System Expansion to Southern Africa, and meeting of the G-WADI/ International Drought Initiative (IDI) Africa Expert Group.

About 50 water scientists and engineers attended a technical training session on “Satellite-based Rainfall (PERSIANN) for Planning and Management for Natural Disasters in Monsoon Asia”.  The session was held on 29 January 2015 during the Thai Hydrologist Association's (THA) 2015 conference.

ICIWaRM hydrologist, and G-WADI team member, Dr. Kristin Gilroy recently completed a one-month Embassy Science Fellow Position through the U.S. State Department in N’Djamena, Chad. Dr. Gilroy was selected for the Embassy Science Fellow (ESF) position to conduct a comprehensive assessment of current research efforts and opportunities for engagement toward finding science-based solutions to the disappearance of Lake Chad. While in Chad, Dr. Gilroy worked to identify the current status of various research projects as well as key gaps in research and critical analytical information on the disappearance of Lake Chad.

Satellite-derived products are often the only timely precipitation estimates available to support decision-making in developing regions with a limited number of on-the-ground rain gages. G-WADI, has taken a leadership role in efforts to make such estimates for applications to floods and droughts in developing countries.

With the great support from Asian G-WADI Secretariat, we have published the G-WADI Special issue under Sciences and Cold Arid Regions Vol.5 No.1. On behalf of G-WADI we would like to thank all the contributors as well as the reviewers for their efforts. You will be able to access the online version from the journal page as well Asian G-WADI webpage.