Water for Humanity

More than one billion people are today without access to sufficient clean and healthy drinking water, and this number is likely to increase dramatically over the next decades. As pointed out by the 2006 Water Report of the United Nations, this is not so much a problem of abundance but rather of insufficient governance. Responsible regional water management will be essential for satisfying the demand for drinking water. Currently, regional water management is hampered by a lack of sufficient observations of the terrestrial water storage, above as well as below the surface. A much improved observation system providing information on all reservoirs of the water cycle on regional to local scales is needed, if we want to avoid severe human and ecological disasters cause by inappropriate water management.

The goal of the IGCP 565 Project is to utilize the Global Geodetic Observing System for monitoring of the mass transport in the water cycle, particularly on regional scales. Geodetic observations of the changes in time in Earth's gravity field, shape, and rotation capture the signals of redistribution of water mass on the globe. The dramatically increased accuracy of the geodetic techniques of the last three decades carries a great potential for measuring water mass as it is cycles from one reservoir to another. The project will, with a series of five annual workshops and a number of associated research projects, explore this potential and aims to provide, at the end, useful products to regional water management, particularly in developing countries.

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Latest News:

[1 November 2012] Tutorial on Hydrogeodesy at the Annual WaterNet Symposium: A special session at the 13th Annual WaterNet Symposium, which was held at the Birchwood Hotel near Johannesburg, South Africa, was devoted to a hydrogeodesy tutorial. About 20 participants were introduced to hydrogeodesy, learned about data assimilation in models and got an overview on Earth observations in support of water resource management. More information on the tutorial is available on the Tutorial web page.

[31 October 2012] Final IGCP 565 Workshop took place: The final workshop of the IGCP 565 Project took place on October 29-30, 2012 at the Birchwood Hotel near Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop participants recommended a new IGCP projects focusing around science support for regional water management. More information on the workshop is available on the Workshop web page.

[8 August 2012] PhD/Postdoc position available at TU-Delft, “Multi-scale modelling of water resources in China”: A PhD/Postdoc position is currently open at TU-Delft for research on the topic of multi-scale modelling of water resources in China. Review of applications will begin September 1, 2012; however, applications will still be accepted after this date until the position is filled. For details, see the announcement .

[18 July 2012] Tutorial on Hydrogeodesy at the WaterNet Symposium: The proposal for a Special Session at the 13th WaterNet Symposium titled “Hydrogeodesy Tutorial: Using Hydrogeodetic Data for Water Budget Studies on Local to River Basin Scales” has been accepted. The 13th symposium will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 31 October – 2 November 2012.

[12 May 2012] Fifth IGCP 565 Workshop to be held in Johannesburg: The Fifth and final annual Workshop of the IGCP 565 Project will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa on October 29-30, 2012. The workshop is colocated with the 13th WaterNet Symposium. A Tutorial on Hydrogeodesy has been proposed for the WaterNet Symposium. Read the details ...

[12 January 2012] Workshop Report available: The report of the Fourth IGCP 565 Workshop, which was held on November 22-23, 2011 at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is available. Read the report ... Go directly to the Recommendations ...

[24 November 2011] Fourth IGCP 565 Workshop took place in Johannesburg, South Africa: The fourth annual Workshop of the IGCP 565 Project was held on November 22-23, 2011 at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop was co-located with the AfricaArray workshop, which took place on November 20-21, 2011. A joint session was organized on the afternoon of November 21, 2011. The IGCP Workshop focussed on Support for water management through hydrological models and data assimilation. For more details the here.

[8 August 2011] Fourth IGCP 565 Workshop moved to Johannesburg, South Africa: For logistical reasons, the location and date of the fourth annual Workshop of the IGCP 565 Project has been changed. The workshop will now be co-located with the AfricaArray workshop, which will be held on November 20-21, 2011 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The IGCP Workshop will take place on November 21-22, 2011, and will focus on Support for water management through hydrological models and data assimilation. For more details the here.

[13 July 2011] Fourth IGCP 565 Workshop to be held in Maputo, Mozambique: The fourth annual Workshop of the IGCP 565 Project will partly be held as a special session at the 12th Symposium of WaterNet, which will take place on October 26-28, 2011 in Maputo, Mozambique. The special session will focus on Support for water management through hydrological models and data assimilation. For more details the here.

[3 July 2011] Article on hydrogeodesy published: An article describing the contribution of geodesy to the monitoring of the global water cycle has been published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Water Scarcity, Global Changes, and Groundwater Management Responses, December 1-5, 2008, Irvince, CA. USA. See the 2011 Conference page for the proceedings or down-load the article.

[19 April 2011] Hydrogeodesy article published in EOS: A brief article on the outcomes of the Third IGCP 565 Workshop has been published in EOS, the newspaper of the American Geophyscial Union (AGU). The full reference is: Plag, H.-P. & Miller, N. M., 2011. Applying Geodesy to Hydrologic Cycle Monitoring. EOS, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 92, 136.