The project Co-HYDIM-SA: Co-Design of Hydrometeorological Information System for Sustainable Water Resources Management in Southern Africa, one of the seven projects funded by the ‘BMBF ‘Water Security for Africa programme commenced its work with a series of workshops in Namibia and Botswana. The project aims to optimize water resources management by providing improved, easy-to-use tools of monitoring and forecasting hydrometeorological parameters in southern Africa, thereby enhancing water security in the region. Working in two trans-boundary water catchments, the Cuvelai (Namibia, Angola) and Notwane (Botswana, South Africa), the project will co-design and co-develop early warning systems with stakeholders from various African countries. Combining novel approaches of sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) and seasonal forecasting, hydrological modeling, and machine learning, the Cuvelai Early Warning System (CUVEWIS) and the Gabarone Dam Early Warning Information System (EWIS) will be developed for the Cuvalai and Notwane, respectively.
To kickstart the project together with stakeholders, a combination of kickoff, co-design and data mining workshops were held in Namibia (30.09.2024 – 04.10.2024) and Botswana (07.10.2024 – 08.10.2024). The objectives of these workshops were to; a) inform the stakeholders on CO-HYDIM-SA, i.e., the objectives, implementation approach, stakeholder engagement, and expected outcomes, b) to discuss the data needs and reassess the suggested error correction and gaps filling strategies, and c) provide the platform to co-design and co-develop the early warning systems, CUVEWIS and EWIS. The workshops also served as a platform to review the status of programme of work for the different work packages.
With a total of about 50 participants from the CO-HYDIM-SA partner consortium partner institutions, national authorities and international institutions, key decisions and achievements of these workshops were;
1) minimum data and system requirements for CUVEWIS and EWIS that will enable the completion of the prototypes within the next two years were agreed upon,
2) a virtual data repository for centralised sharing of data and data sources, hence, avoiding duplication of data sourcing was created,
3) initial capacity development needs of key stakeholders like Cuvelai Watercourse Commission (CUVECOM) and Water Utilisation Corporation (WUC) that will enable efficient operations of the EWISs, especially after the project end, were established,
4) synergies between and shared stakeholders with the other six WASA projects were established, for example, possibility of shared trainings events, data collection efforts, knowledge and experiences sharing,
5) ways forward for collecting data and filling data gaps, e.g., through centralised data requests were agreed upon, and
6) bi-lateral meetings with key stakeholders, e.g., NamWater to establish concrete linkages were held, among others.
These decisions will be critical for the attainment of the overall objectives and goal of the project. Following the principle of co-design, engaging the stakeholders at an initial stage of the project assures that exact needs of the intended users of the EWISs are considered, their skills gaps to enable them efficiently utilise the system are addressed, and, most importantly, the sustainable use after the project lifespan will be achieved.
Besides implementation of the reviewed work plans, continued engagement with stakeholders is envisioned in the coming months. This will allow continued iteration of the plans and more stakeholders needs are captured, ensuring an effective co-design and co-development process of the EWISs.
Authors: Prof. Dr. Andreas H. Fink, Simon Ageet
More information on all seven projects can be found here and in the programme publication.