Conference,
Remote sensing and GIS for regional land and water management in Central Asia: Lessons learnt and a call for viable cooperation
(Oktober 2018)
Abstract
"Innovative tools such as remote sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) support in implementing environmental assessment workflows for decision-making. They are essential for data collection and integration, hence for developing indicators in the context of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals such as SDG 2 “Zero Hunger” (e.g., food security and sustainable agriculture) and SDG 6 “Clean Water and Sanitation” (e.g., availability and sustainable management of water). All are of paramount importance for Central Asia, where agriculture is the economic backbone in many regions.
Geotechnology is a great chance, yet a challenge for Central Asia. This is mainly due to the high demand for spatial information while the supply with reliable data remains difficult. For instance, consistent information on crop yields or water use efficiency are relevant for a sustainable land and water resource use in the Aral Sea Basin (ASB). The knowledge about innovative geotechnology however did not emerge in the region. Thus, the regional knowledge gap has been persisting in both, research and practice.
How can RS and GIS enter practice in Central Asia? Present contribution aims at answering this crucial question using the example of the regional web-based tool “Water Use Efficiency Monitoring for Central Asia”. WUEMoCA is an automated tool for computing RS-based indicators for supporting water management in large-scale irrigation systems in the ASB. It is the result of a an intense cooperation between German and Central Asian partners, in particular the University in Würzburg in Germany and the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Commission on Water Coordination (SIC-ICWC) in Uzbekistan.
The presentation will look beyond the technical details. It will shed light on important aspects of the cooperative tool development, different expectations to RS applications, and sustainability, i.e. long-term acceptance as well as maintenance and use of the tool. Selected major bottlenecks and potential solutions in cooperative development will be highlighted.
For instance, Central Asian partners have certain expectations on including own indicators, which, however, were not reviewed for a long time. Opposite, geoinformation scientists bring in their research background, but need to get familiar with local and regional workflows of decision-making and characteristic in cooperative relationships. Moreover, cooperation requires familiarization with inter- and transdisciplinary project work. It is recommended to the start the process of implementation with one potential user. This certain user such as the SIC-ICWC in the development of WUEMoCA is supposed to act as an interface between science and practice. Based on its expertise and the collaboration, the first user(s) will be enabled to take over future ownership and to promote the tool. Other aspects in cooperation may consider the tool design, the tool implementation, sensitivity of secondary data, and expectations in accuracy and standardization.
To run WUEMoCA in the long-term is of great interest, but might be hampered by numerous reasons, one of which definitely is a mixture of the knowledge gap in geoinformation science and the slow academic development. Thus, the tool including its entire development code will be provided free of charge towards any interested university or research institute in the region. A training program in GIS and RS is also intended.
In future, similar tools will become possible but require a strengthening of the academia and cooperation by researchers, donors, practitioners, and politics. This should include the selection of the most talented young researchers and the strengthening of integrating them into science and practice, particularly those who gained knowledge and experiences abroad (i.e., multiplier). Finally, cooperation among the institutes and authorities will be improved, thus will become more efficient and future-oriented.
