G-WADI Co-Organizes ICTP-Africa Joint School on Rainfall and Water Resources Management

An accurate estimate of how much water is available is crucial for planning purposes in agriculture, energy production, water supply and many other sectors. In addition, this timely information is important for flood and drought management. These estimates all begin with accurate estimates of rainfall, followed by but many African countries have limited in-situ measurements available.

To help address this need, G-WADI and its partners co-organized an online, week-long “Joint School on Rainfall and Water Resources Management”, primarily for African water professionals, on 25-29 July, 2022. The instructors were provided primarily by the Center of Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) of the University of California, Irvine, along with UNESCO’s International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the East African Institute for Fundamental Research at the University of Rwanda.   UNESCO’s regional offices for Eastern and Southern Africa and the International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management also provided support.

The workshop included lectures and practical exercises on the CHRS historical precipitation tool RainSphere, Algorithm Development and Challenges of Satellite Precipitation Estimation, the CHRS real-time precipitation estimation tool iRain, Hydroclimatic Projection of flood and drought hazards, the CHRS Data Portal, Correlating Satellite and Ground Data, and guest presentations. The workshop concluded with presentations from participant groups on applications of these tools to their own regions.  There were about 85 participants, from Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, and Zambia along with Argentina, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Russian Federation, Spain and Taiwan province of China.

The workshop will promote collaboration and data sharing between workers in different African countries as well as interaction between African researchers/workers and their counterparts in other parts of the world.  It will also contribute to the implementation of the 9th phase of IHP 2022-2029, "Science for a Water Secure World in a Changing Environment".

Recordings and presentation materials are available at https://indico.ictp.it/event/9814.