Water Papers

183 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16997

Water Papers are produced by the Water Global Practice, taking up the work of the predecessor Water Unit, Transport, Water and ICT Department, Sustainable Development Vice Presidency.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

New Avenues for Remote Sensing Applications for Water Management: A Range of Applications and the Lessons Learned from Implementation

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) World Bank

Water management agencies in many parts of the world are currently missing big opportunities to increase their capacity to monitor water resources. This report presents a range of remote sensing applications to support water resources management and decision-making, and discusses implementation approaches and their sustainability going forward. These were developed within the second phase of the global initiative on remote sensing for water resources management, conceived to help mainstream beneficial remote sensing uses in operational projects of the Bank, and to facilitate the adoption in World Bank client countries. This report is addressed to water practitioners in general, technical staff in national water agencies, and project leads from development and financing institutions. The goal of the report is to present insights from innovative remote sensing applications to help address specific water resources management challenges. The results presented include constraints identified in the adoption of remote sensing, the approaches adopted to make applications functional in different contexts, the project applications themselves, insights on their sustainability, and ways forward.
Mainstreaming the Use of Remote Sensing Data and Applications in Operational Contexts

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-01-31) World Bank Group

This report presents the activities and outcomes to date of the global initiative on remote sensing for water resources management phase two. The Initiative was conceived to help mainstream the use of beneficial remote sensing applications in operational projects of the Bank, as well as to facilitate the adoption of remote sensing applications in World Bank client countries. By bridging the gap between the supply of remote sensing data and the needs from the Bank’s operational projects, Earth Observations can better inform client country agencies by improving monitoring and predictive capabilities and supporting better water-related operations. This report is addressed to technical staff in national water agencies, project leads from development and financing institutions, and water practitioners in general. The goal of the report is to present insights from a range of innovative remote sensing applications developed within the Remote Sensing Initiative, to help address specific water resources management challenges. The results presented here include constraints identified in the adoption of remote sensing, the approaches adopted to make applications functional in different contexts, the project applications themselves, insights on their sustainability, and ways forward. These applications can be replicated, up-scaled, and adapted in many other contexts to address similar challenges. We hope the information contained in this report will help country agencies and project teams in integrating the use of remote sensing in their water resources management practices, as well as in project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Modernizing Weather, Water, and Climate Services: A Road Map for Bhutan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-07-21) World Bank Group

The main objective of this technical assistance paper is to provide recommendations to the Royal Government of Bhutan for modernizing its hydrometeorological services, including capacity strengthening for disasterrelated early warning systems (EWSs). The DHMS does not have a national hydromet services policy but is in the process of preparing a strategic document to guide its modernization and institutional reform process. This technical assistance paper contributes to this process and proposes a road map for transforming the DHMS into a modern service delivery agency.
Beyond Downscaling : A Bottom-Up Approach to Climate Adaptation for Water Resources Management

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09-11) Garcia, L.E. ; Matthews, J.H. ; Rodriguez, D.J. ; Wijnen, M. ; DiFrancesco, K.N. ; Ray, P.

This report focuses on how we achieve water sustainability over long timescales - decades, even centuries from now. These timescales are important and relevant to our decisions about planning, infrastructure, and institutions today. Many of the methods we use to manage water, directly or indirectly, commit us to future decision pathways and restrict us from making other, alternative decisions. Across the first four chapters, this report describes the challenges of including climate change in water management decision-making and provides an overview of current practices in the adaptation field. After considering the pros and cons of these practices, the book concludes with a framework for an adaptation approach supported by Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA).
Climate Variability and Change : A Basin Scale Indicator Approach to Understanding the Risk to Water Resources Development and Management

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-09) Strzepek, Kenneth ; McCluskey, Alyssa ; Boehlert, Brent ; Jacobsen, Michael ; Fant IV, Charles

The impact of climate change is likely to have considerable implications for water resource planning, as well as adding to the risks to water infrastructure systems and effecting return on investments. Attention is increasingly being paid to adaptation strategies at the regional and basin level; however, the current paucity of information regarding the potential risk to hydrological systems at this scale presents a substantial challenge for effective water resources planning and investment. This study is intended to help bridge the gap between high-level climate change predictions and the needs of decision-makers, including World Bank Task Team Leaders, government agencies, investors, and national economic development planners, whose programs and investments will be affected by basin- and regional-level impacts of climate change on water resources and related infrastructures. This study evaluates the effects of climate change on six hydrological indicators across 8,413 basins in World Bank client countries. These indicators, mean annual runoff (MAR), basin yield, annual high flow, annual low flow, groundwater (base-flow), and reference crop water deficit, were chosen based on their relevance to the wide range of water resource development projects planned for the future. To generate a robust, high-resolution understanding of possible risk, this analysis examines relative changes in all variables from the historical baseline (1961 to 1999) to the 2030s and 2050s for the full range of 56 General Circulation Model (GCM) Special Report on Emissions Scenario (SRES) combinations evaluated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).