Hydrology research is regarded as vital for advancing human development and environmental conservation through improved hydrological process understanding and by devising solutions to address water management challenges. This is particularly acute in a time of global change and the need to find pathways to water sustainability.  Success for research in hydrology is often measured through quantitative research outputs, such as the number of journal publications, citation indices, number of students trained, patents, and external research funding. User involvement in the research and development process is rarely considered a metric for success in hydrology. Despite successful scientific or engineering advancements, a greater scientific understanding of hydrology and ever-increasing publications, much of the research has limited uptake by practitioners and implementation into practice, leading to a growing gap between research and practice.  This lack of utilisation is not due to a lack of need by users, but rather is a symptom of the disconnect between these advances and research that would most add value to practitioners and their application needs. We explore some outstanding challenges in translating academic research into practice and make some recommendations to bridge the increasing gaps between research and practice through a transdisciplinary approach, user engagement metrics in funded research and strong knowledge mobilization. We also discuss the success and challenges of these approaches in the Global Water Futures program along with lessons learned.  

How to cite: Pietroniro, A., Rokaya, P., Schuster-Wallace, C., and Pomeroy, J. W.: Translating hydrology research into practice: A Canadian Perspective, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-4485, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-4485, 2023.

Over a five year period, a systemic approach to water and climate solutions refer to as social innovation was developed in the framework of the AfriAlliance project. The approach recognised the need to combine five aspects for increased relevance and synergies for the water and climate science, policy and practices. The above mentioned aspects included technological solutions, governance structures, capacity development, a business roadmap and knowledge brokerage events. This manuscript documents lessons learned from the fifteen knowledge brokerage events held across the African Continent.  These events provided a platform to 1060 participants who came across 125 innovations. Policy makers, funders, utility operators, scientists, non-governmental organisations, river’s authorities and organisations, entrepreneurs and practioners were represented. The AfriAlliance knowledge brokerage events covered all the 5 African sub-regions. These events were designed and implemented in an innovative way providing participants ample opportunity to network and engage with innovators after their pitch presentations. Specialised and high-level panels provided policy makers, funders and international cooperating partners an opportunity to share their perspectives with innovators and the audience. Policy makers recurrently indicated the need to align water and climate innovations and solutions to existing priorities and frameworks. Funders and international cooperating partners highlighted the limited capacity from innovators in terms of scalability and access to funding. These events also brought up the difficulty of always getting the right audience especially when the knowledge brokerage event took place in the framework of specialized conferences. The Covid-19 pandemic introduced also an additional layer of complexity and required some adaptation to the face to face set-up that was initially designed. Hence two out of the fifteen events took place online. The virtual setup appeared to reach a broader geographical audience but the interactions were not as effective as those organised in person.  These events have shown a considerable potential to bring together scientists, policy makers and practioners in order to match topical solution providers and the users. On the other hand, these kind of knowledge brokerage events remain project dependent and adhoc in nature for one to expect some long-term impact.

How to cite: Kileshye Onema, J.-M., wehn, U., Tlhagale, M., Sossou, S., and Quayle, T.: Optimisation of the water and climate science, policy and practice nexus: Insights from the AfriAlliance knowledge brokerage events., EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13956, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13956, 2023.

The Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) is a consortium of 28 institutions to advance the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) science and services capabilities to provide actionable water resources intelligence. CIROH’s research aims to improve water prediction and supports four broad themes: (1) water resources prediction capabilities; (2) community water resources modeling; (3) hydroinformatics; and (4) application of social, economic and behavioral science to water resources prediction. CIROH outcomes will inform hydrological process understanding, operational forecasting techniques and workflows, community engagement in water modeling, open-source software development, translation of forecasts to actionable products, and use of predictions in decision making.

This presentation will focus on CIROH’s research in community water modelling. In this theme, CIROH research focuses on advancing the predictive capabilities of the next-generation National Water Resources Modeling framework (NextGen framework) that is being developed for operational large-domain water prediction at NOAA’s National Water Center (NWC). The presentation will give examples of ongoing CIROH model development efforts to (1) integrate physical process representations into the NextGen framework across multiple levels of process granularity; (2) assess accuracy-efficiency trade-offs in the numerical solution of model equations across large spatial domains; (3) coupling process components that have hitherto been neglected in large-domain terrestrial system models (e.g., glacier hydrology, snow redistribution, connectivity of wetlands, land-atmosphere interactions over sparse forests, tile drainage, etc.); and (4) use hybrid machine learning methods to advance large-domain parameter estimation capabilities. The presentation will also highlight the establishment of research enabling infrastructure to support CIROH’s ongoing modeling advancement efforts. In summary, we will identify major challenges encountered and the high-priority research that is needed to advance capabilities in large-domain hydrologic prediction.

How to cite: Burian, S., Clark, M., Shen, C., Spiteri, R., Halgren, J., Patel, A., van Beusekom, A., Cohen, S., and Ogden, F.: Advancing community water resources modeling in the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-16702, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-16702, 2023.

Climate change and drought have imposed tremendous pressure on water resources in most parts of the world. Therefore, addressing drought impacts on water resources and socioeconomic conditions has gained attention to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies. Many innovative and cutting-edge modeling systems set up by academic institutions are exclusively available to academics and are not accessible or used by practitioners or policymakers. These constraints are in particular relevant in data poor regions where decision making and drought management are hampered by a lack of drought information. Therefore, within OUTLAST project (Development of an Operational, mUlTi-sectoral globaL drought hAzard forecasting SysTem), we aim to develop and implement the first worldwide, multi-sectoral, and operational drought forecasting system for quantifying drought hazard in water supply, riverine and non-agricultural land ecosystems, rainfed and irrigated agriculture. The forecasts provided by OUTLAST can also support better drought management and therefore contribute to the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, particularly SDG1(no poverty), SDG2 (zero hunger), SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG13 (climate action) and SDG15 (life on land). In cooperation with pilot users in the project regions of Lake Victoria (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) and West and Central Asia (e.g. Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan), the value of global-scale forecasts released for the subsequent six months for data-poor and transboundary basins will be tested. Through co-design, relevant drought indicators will be defined and the web portal and pilot applications of these global forecasts for drought management and water governance will be developed. We also systematically investigate the predictive ability of global-scale drought forecasts based on bias-corrected seasonal ensemble weather forecasts, as well as the factors influencing the predictive skill in terms of (i) the type of drought (soil moisture and hydrological droughts) and the affected sector, (ii) the length of the forecast period, (iii) seasonal and regional differences in predictive quality. Two global-scale models (WaterGAP and GCWM) will be further developed to provide operational and monthly drought forecasts globally at 0.5-degree spatial resolution and for a six-month forecast period. The applicability of the data and models for drought forecasting will be rigorously examined for different locations, sectors, and periods using historical reanalysis data and historical ensemble forecasts. This will entail using historical meteorological "forecasts" to generate drought forecasts for historical drought events reported for these regions and validating them regionally. Finally, an automated operational modeling system will be created to download and process the necessary meteorological input data, calculate the drought indicators, visualize them appropriately, and transfer them to the Global Hydrological Status and Outlook System (HydroSOS) at World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Through a flexible implementation (cloud-based), we will enable a potential transfer of the forecast system to different users. The use of the HydroSOS-portal of WMO to visualize project results and as an outlet of the drought forecast products will make optimal use of synergies and ensure high visibility and impact of the research performed in OUTLAST.

How to cite: Siebert, S., Abbasi, N., Cullmann, J., Döll, P., Trautmann, T., Köthe, H., Kunstmann, H., and Weber, J.: OUTLAST - Development of an operational, multi-sectoral global drought hazard forecasting system, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11755, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11755, 2023.

The management of water resources, their allocation and use is mainly directed by the policy at the strategic scale. In that way, the different sector interests can be coordinated, as well as principles of sustainable water use and goals of environmental conservation can be ensured. However, even the decision making at the strategic scale (i.e. at the level of the entire country) requires reliable information that provides sufficient support for decision makers in planning the further use of water resources. Accordingly, at the initiative of the decision maker (Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning of the Republic of Slovenia) the researchers at the Institute for Water of the Republic of Slovenia have developed a decision support system for water availability estimation in Slovenia. A multi-criteria approach was used, combining scientific approach in estimating the available water amounts (discharge in ungauged locations) and coordinated approach in setting the criteria, indicating the vulnerability of the environment according to specific locations and the attractiveness of that locations in terms of water use. The scientific aspect was used for the establishment of the methodology for the estimation of discharge in ungauged locations. Different machine learning and data mining techniques were tested, however Top kriging (Skøien et al., 2006) method was selected as the most accurate for assessment of the discharge across the country’s catchments, larger than 10 km². Estimated characteristic discharges were then revised according to the environmental needs to evaluate the amounts of water available for further use. However, the selection of the criteria was performed through interdisciplinary collaboration with experts and decision makers from various fields. During settling of the selected criteria, the importance of cooperation was shown. Our initial list of the criteria was not sufficient, as some of the aspects were addressed differently or overlooked. It should also be taken into account that representatives of different fields determined the different importance of the included criteria.

Acknowledgement: The development of the decision-support system was financed by the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning of the Republic of Slovenia through the Institute’s annual work programme for years 2020 – 2023.

How to cite: Šantl, S., Sevšek, M., and Zabret, K.: Decision-support system for water availability estimation, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11305, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11305, 2023.

Water related extreme events are causing most of the disasters worldwide. Between 2001 and 2018 around 74% disasters were water-related and during the past 20 years, the total number of deaths caused only by floods and droughts exceeded 166,000, while floods and droughts affected over three billion people, and caused total economic damage of almost US$700 billion (EM-DAT, 2019). The number of events with water related extremes are expected to increase due to climatic and land use changes.

Thus, it is of utmost importance to identify ways to reduce water related risks. Potential hazards, exposure and vulnerability have to be identified, published and communicated. This is done for example in the European Union in a coordinated way, based on the European Flood Risk Management Directive. However, identifying risk only is not leading to actual actions and is not  sufficient to reduce risks. This became again obvious in 2021 when extreme floods caused more than 180 deaths in Germany and caused around 46 billion Euro damage. This and other events are revealing the need for closing the gap between theory and practise to establish proactive and preventive strategies and implementation of measures.

Ghana is one of the countries most prone to floods in West Africa. Its annual occurrence often leads to disasters that are mostly felt by the urban poor. Despite the existence of salient activities conducted in order to reduce the flood risk in Ghana, there are still persisting challenges (Almoradie et al. 2020).

In order to overcome the implementation gap from science to practice a participatory and transdisciplinary mixed-method approach for Ghana is pursuied. Transdisciplinary research integrates knowledge from various scientific disciplines and non-academic actors.In this way, results can be developed for challenges that are of use to society and science.In the long term, transdisciplinary research strengthens knowledge about the human-water/flood system, the desired state of this system and the way to achieve this state by transformative adaptation.

A participatory mixed-method approach comprising hydrological and hydrodynamic modelling, participatory mapping, questionnaires, workshops, focus group discussion, system dynamic modelling and the analysis of vulnerability including failure of critical infrastrcuture were employed (Evers et al. 2021) for three case study areas in Ghana. The dynamics of human-flood-interaction are identified together with practioneers and adaptation measures were identified in a participatory way. By this approach we are aiming to make our research actionable and to design and implement knowledge translation mechanisms.

Almoradie, A.*, de Brito, M.M.*Evers, M., Bossa, A., Lumor, M., Norman, C., Yacouba, Y., Hounkpe, J. (2020) Current flood risk management practices in Ghana: gaps and opportunities for improving resilience. International Journal of Flood Risk Management, doi:10.1111/jfr3.12664.

Evers, M., Almoradie, A., de Brito, M. M., Höllermann, B., Ntajal, J., Lumor, M., Bossa, A., Norman, C., Yira Yacouba, Y. Y.,J. H. Jean Hounkpe (2021): Flood risk management in Ghana: gaps, opportunities, and socio-technical tools for improving resilience, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12683, doi:/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12683

How to cite: Evers, M., Almoradie, A., Ntajal, J., Höllermann, B., Johann, G., Meyer, H., Schüttrumpf, A., Kruse, S., Ziga-Abortta, F., Bachmann, D., Schotten, R., Lumor, M., Norman, C., and Adjei, K.: Pro-active flood risk managment using a transdisciplinary multi-method-approach, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11980, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11980, 2023.

The success of river restoration is a controversy subject depending on chosen reference conditions and stakeholder perspective. Therefore, the tool to assess the effectiveness of restoring physical conditions in riparian wetlands aims to be a comprehensible piece of evidence to policy-makers. The assessment is based on three hypotheses: (i) the restoration should have standard-based results; (ii) the restoration should respect principle-based results; (iii) the nature is more valuable without human pressures. Therefore, the multi-criteria methodology includes three categories of indicators: (i) to detect results compared to pre-restoration conditions as well as to historical conditions; (ii) to estimate the functionality of physical conditions compared to expert opinion; (iii) to analyze the naturalness of a river site. Each indicator is given a score compared to hypothetically successful effects of the restoration based on an earth scientist approach. The overall score allows to classify the effectiveness of river restoration on a five-class scale from very good to poor. The tool is validated for the Comana Marsh on a second order tributary of the Danube River in Romania. A small-size dam and a system of concrete dykes was built to recreate a marsh upstream, in the floodplain. According to the tool: (i) the effects (e.g., surface-water area, depth) were a success compared to pre-restoration conditions, yet they could not recreate the historical conditions; (ii) new processes (e.g., anastomosing river pattern) appear to be functional when compared to scientific expectations; (iii) the river site gained hybrid features (i.e., rewilding in the context of human pressures). The effectiveness of restoring the Comana Marsh was estimated as being good. The tool could be further developed by integrating other groups of indicators based on stakeholders’ perspective. Understanding the theoretical results of river restoration could help policy-makers to gain confidence and further finance this domain underdeveloped in Romania.    

This work was supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2021-0600, within PNCDI III.

How to cite: Ioana-Toroimac, G., Moroșanu, G.-A., Șandor, I.-A., Stoica, C., and Constantin, D.-M.: Tool to assess the effectiveness of restoring physical conditions in riparian wetlands, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-1853, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-1853, 2023.

Project Background: The RadClim BSR project aims to establish the feasibility of developing a radar-based precipitation climatology in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). The project involves partners in countries across the BSR including Sweden, Estonia and Poland. The status of radar data archiving, utility of the data, and any data harmonisation requirements across the partner countries and the BSR in general are being investigated. Partners in Sweden, Estonia and Poland are acting as country coordinators, reaching out to a large range of actors to thoroughly explore their needs pertaining to radar climatology, utilising a user needs survey (ongoing from early February-March 2023). Consultations with the national weather services in Germany and Finland, who have already undertaken steps in radar climatology development, are aiding in ensuring best practices are adhered to. This seed project has the intention of laying the framework for the full development of a radar-based precipitation climatology (datasets and visualisations) spanning the BSR, relevant for a large range of actors in the near future.

EGU poster: At EGU 2023, we will present the results of the user needs survey that was distributed to a wide range of relevant actors in the project partner countries of Sweden, Estonia and Poland. The surveys were translated into each countries official language before being distributed, to maximise participation and ensure all representatives who should offer their perspective could, regardless of English language capacity. Through to the end of the project in early 2024, the results from this survey will be analysed and summarised, to form the user needs assessment for a radar-based precipitation climatology across the BSR.

How to cite: Lowry, B., Hoy, A., and Hashemi, H.: RadClim BSR - Towards a Radar-based Precipitation Climatology for the Baltic Sea Region, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-8725, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-8725, 2023.

Most existing climate impact assessments in Nepal only consider a limited number of generic climate indices such as means. Few studies have explored climate extremes and their sectoral implications, which in turn are key for informing policy and practice. This study evaluates future scenarios of extreme climate indices from the list of the Expert Team on Sector-specific Climate Indices (ET-SCI) and their sectoral implications in the Karnali Basin in western Nepal. First, future projections of 26 climate indices relevant to six climate-sensitive sectors in Karnali are made for the near (2021–2045), mid (2046–2070), and far (2071–2095) future for low- and high-emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, respectively) using bias-corrected ensembles of 19 regional climate models from the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment for South Asia (CORDEX-SA). Second, a qualitative analysis based on expert interviews and a literature review on the impact of the projected climate extremes on the climate-sensitive sectors is undertaken. We also used widely available global data sets such as DesInventar and national census data and disaster-specific mixed-effects regression models to assess the impact of precipitation extremes on landslide and flood mortality.  Both the temperature and precipitation patterns are projected to deviate significantly from the historical reference already from the near future with increased occurrences of extreme events. Results show winter in the highlands is expected to become warmer and dryer. The hot and wet tropical summer in the lowlands will become hotter with longer warm spells and fewer cold days. Low-intensity precipitation events will decline, but the magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation events will increase. Furthermore, an increase in one standardized unit in maximum one-day precipitation increases flood mortality by 33%, and heavy rain days increase landslide mortality by 45%.

How to cite: Bharati, L. and Chapagain, D.: Policy and practice relevant climate change impact assessments: Case study, Western Nepal, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13241, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13241, 2023.

Effective natural resources management, especially of wetlands, are vital for the sustainability of livelihoods. This is further buttressed in Southern Africa where competing uses and users are increasingly putting pressure on these finite resources. The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) with financial support from the African Union and the European Commission in the framework of the GMES programme endeavoured to develop a geoportal tool for effective wetland Management through a project called Wetland Monitoring and Assessment Service for Transboundary Basins in Southern Africa (WeMAST). WeMAST has an emphasis on capacity building and awareness raising for wetland assessment and monitoring in the following four transboundary river basins (Cuvelai, Okavango, Limpopo and Zambezi) across the SADC region. The WeMAST geoportal, developed during phase one, provides hydro-meteorological and physiographic attributes assessment and monitoring of wetlands. These include the spatial and temporal extent and status of wetlands, land cover and uses dynamics, flooding, vulnerability and fire indices. For the second phase, WeMAST puts emphasis on developmental impact on the ground hence some deliberate efforts are in place in order to enhance synergies between the scientists behind the concepts, the users, private sector and local communities on the ground as well as policy makers with the overall responsibilities of guiding the implementations of developmental pathways. In Phase II, policy and decision makers in the target countries (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe) need to support upscaling and operationalization of the WeMAST geoportal.  As a result, the project consortium has now been designed in order to foster more interactions between stakeholders involved in wetland management through knowledge brokerage events where the geoportal tool, its products and services are disseminated, tested and validated to a great extent. Similarly an interface with policy makers has been established within the consortium through WaterNet via the Water Resources Technical Committee (WRTC) in order to appraise and involve SADC ministers in charge of water and natural resources management twice annually. The innovative and well-crafted approach of the WeMAST project under GMES offers a considerable room for enhanced synergies between policy makers, Scientists, the private sector and practioners for sustainable and effective wetland Management in the SADC region.

How to cite: Nyatoro, D. T., Onema, J.-M. K., Tacheba, B., and Olwoch, J.: Enhancing the science-policy-practice nexus for effective and sustainable wetland Management in Southern Africa, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-17248, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-17248, 2023.