The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) is hosting a one-day SERVIR Water Africa Arizona Team (SWAAT) workshop on Real-Time Streamflow Forecasting in Africa Basins. The SWAAT project provides real-time streamflow forecasts for several pilot basins in Africa and their main sub-watersheds and bias
corrected precipitation information from various satellites. Consequently, these products are displayed in a SWAAT website platform. The test basins include Mara basin in Kenya, Tekeze basin in Ethiopia and Upper Zambezi in Zambia. This is a collaborative initiative between the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona and the SERVIR program. In this regard, RCMRD is playing an important role in helping the project adopt an integrative regional approach. The project’s main objectives include developing near real-time monitoring and forecasting applications in Africa to support water resources management and measuring future impacts of climate variability and change on water resources (and their uncertainty), which will inform current and future adaptation strategies.
The SWAAT project team is responsible for developing applications that help in meeting specific needs reported from the field, such as the lack of quantitative tools to estimate water availability at resolutions necessary for decision making. These applications may be used for a range of water resources management activities and adaptation in support of food, energy and livelihood security. The precipitation estimates used in SWAAT are publicly available online and on various hydrologic models used for streamflow forecasting.
The workshop is being attended by participants from the Kenya Meteorological Service (KMS), Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA), Kenya Department of Water Resources (KDWR), Kenya Water Institute (KEWI), Mau Mara Serengeti (MaMaSe) project, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Kenya & East Africa, Planning for Resilience in East Africa Through Policy, Adaptation, Research, and Economic Development (PREPARED) project, Nature Conservancy Africa, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing (DRSRS), Rural Focus Ltd, University of Arizona, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and University of Oklahoma.
