eartH2Observe – Global Earth Observation for Integrated Water Resource Assessment

Abstract

The project eartH2Observe brings together the findings from European FP projects DEWFORA, GLOWASIS, WATCH, GEOWOW and others. It will integrate available global earth observations (EO), in-situ datasets and models and will construct a global water resources re-analysis dataset of significant length (several decades). The resulting data will allow for improved insights on the full extent of available water and existing pressures on global water resources in all parts of the water cycle. The project will support efficient  and globally consistent water management and decision making by providing comprehensive multi-scale (regional, continental and global) water resources observations. It will test new EO data sources, extend existing processing algorithms and combine data from multiple satellite missions in order to improve the overall resolution and reliability of EO data included in the re-analysis dataset. The usability and operational value of the developed data will be verified and demonstrated in a number of case-studies across the world that aim to improve the efficiency of regional water distribution. The case-studies will be conducted together with local end-users and stakeholders. Regions of interest cover multiple continents, a variety of hydrological, climatological and governance conditions and differ in degree of data richness. The data will be disseminated though an open data Water Cycle Integrator portal to ensure increased availability of global water resources information on both regional and global scale. The data portal will be the European contributor to the existing GEOSS water cycle platforms and communities. Project results will be actively disseminated using a combination of traditional methods (workshops, papers, website and conferences) and novel methods such as E-learning courses and webinars that promote the use of the developed dataset.

Specific Objectives

The EartH2Observe objective has been divided and refined in 7 specific objectives to be pursued along the course of the project:

• Validate EO products based on end-user needs and metrics ensuring the value of the project’s final datasets for local and regional decision making.
• Test new EO parameters and data sources in order to improve monitoring capabilities in terms of resolution and reliability and to explore techniques for synergetic use of datasets from multiple satellite missions.Project Objectives
• Integrate in-situ data on groundwater, surface water, water quality, soil moisture, precipitation and evaporation with EO-driven models resulting in a model and multi-data global water resources reanalysis.
• Assess error propagation through large scale water resource modelling, using in-situ data from data-rich validation sites, in order to improve EO datasets and to be able to provide the project’s datasets to end-users together with their associated error characteristics.
• Develop a global reanalysis of water resources that supports efficient water management and decision making by boosting the availability of information on freshwater resources worldwide.
• Demonstrate the usefulness of the integrated water resources time series at the operational level in regional and local case studies.
• Ensure the results will become part of the GEOSS Data-CORE encyclopedia, connecting to the GEOSS Water Cycle Integrator (WCI) initiatives and openly providing and sharing the datasets developed in the project.