G-WADI Provides Input to Friend Inter-Group Coordination Committee Meeting Dec. 7, 2020 The Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme is beginning the eighth and final year of its eighth phase (IHP-VIII; Water Security), and strategic planning is near completion for IHP-IX, which will cover the period 2022-2029. In conjunction with this transition period, the Inter-Group Coordination Committee of IHP’s FRIEND-Water (Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data) initiative Meeting met on the 25th of November to evaluate their current activities and strategize over future ones. Other IHP initiatives, including G-WADI, were invited to intervene to identify synergies with FRIEND activities. Read more Image
G-WADI's Water Planning Methodology Sets the Pace as UNESCO's First Open Learning Course Nov. 9, 2020 As announced in UNESCO’s News stream, on 2nd November 2020, the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa launched an online course on the G-WADI developed Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) methodology. It was the first course on any topic hosted on the recently developed UNESCO open learning platform. The targeted participants/students come from government officials from the ministries of water, local authorities, engineers, academia and elsewhere. Read more Image
G-WADI Joins Five UNESCO Category 2 Centers in Organizing Transboundary Cooperation Session at Cairo Water Week Oct. 25, 2020 G-WADI and five UNESCO Category 2 Centers organized a session titled “Transboundary cooperation for improved data sharing, flood and drought mitigation, and river basin management” at the Third Cairo Water Week, held 18-22 October 2020. About 80 people participated virtually. Read more Image
G-WADI Holds Second Webinar in UNESCO Series on Climate-Resilient Water Management Approaches Sept. 30, 2020 The second webinar in the series, “Climate-Resilient Water Management Approaches: Adaptation in an Age of Uncertainty”, was held on Thursday, 24 September and hosted by UNESCO. It was titled, “Incorporating Climate Risks into Decision Making through CRIDA: Perspectives from Zambia and Chile”. About 220 people participated. Read more Image
USAID Champions G-WADI's CRIDA Methodology in Southern Africa Sept. 15, 2020 The USAID Resilient Waters Program’s goal is “to build more resilient and water secure Southern African communities and ecosystems through improved management of trans-boundary natural resources and increased access to safe drinking water and sanitation services.” Recently the program discovered that UNESCO G-WADI’s Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) approach to water management can help strengthen the ability their partner institutions to respond to climate change. CRIDA provides bottom-up, stepwise planning guidance for water resources planners, managers, and engineers to incorporate resilience into their planning and operational decisions. Read more
State of California, USA, Adopts G-WADI's Climate Risk-Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) as its Climate Change Adaptation Approach Aug. 15, 2020 California’s $3.2 trillion economy—ranked 5th globally if it were a country—depends greatly on water. Water for agriculture, water for drinking, water for power, and water for ecosystems. California’s Water Plan has a broad and diverse portfolio of recommended actions to address its many often conflicting water challenges—flood risk, surface- and groundwater supplies, and habitat and species resiliency. And this delicate water balance is potentially threatened by climate change. Read more
G-WADI and Partners Launch Webinar Series on Climate-Resilient Water Management Approaches July 19, 2020 Over the past ten-plus years, various organizations have developed a set of complementary resilient water management tools and approaches that work to address climate risks and other uncertainties in a manner that can be integrated within existing planning, design, and operational decision processes. These “bottom-up approaches” differ from the original paradigm guiding water management for the past half-century — namely the assumption that we can use past hydrological and climatic data to confidently predict (and plan for) the future. Read more Image
CRIDA Case Study for Climate-Vulnerable Chilean River Basin Published May 15, 2020 A Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) based case study in the Limarí River basin in Chile has been published in the journal Climate Risk Management. The Limarí River basin CRIDA study assessed the impact of climatic and non-climatic drivers on the water security of using a climate stress test on a vulnerable mountain catchment in Chile, to identify water security hazards under climate change projections. By engaging local stakeholders early in the process through a collaborative, bottom-up approach, the performance indicators and the critical thresholds were identified beyond which significant economic impacts occur. Read more Image
G-WADI Leads CRIDA Workshop in Kruger National Park, South Africa March 20, 2020 A Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) Workshop was held in Hazyview, northeastern South Africa during 11-12 March 2020. It was organized and funded by Kruger National Park and led by UNESCO G-WADI. Additional support came from UNESCO's CliMWaR project, with funding from the Government of Flanders. Read more Image
New Flood and Drought Monitoring and Forecasting System for Mozambique and Zimbabwe Feb. 15, 2020 UNESCO G-WADI and Princeton Climate Analytics have developed a new Flood and Drought Monitoring and Forecasting system for Mozambique & Zimbabwe with a 0.05° (∼5 km) resolution. The system is based on the continental African Flood and Drought Monitor (AFDM), which has been updated to a higher resolution near real-time system using a combination of existing datasets used in the operational AFDM and newly available datasets. The product is intended to provide advance warning of impending floods and droughts. Read more Image