Supporting commission(s) / organisations: ICGW, ICSIH, Panta Rhei
The importance of developing innovative Information and Communication Technology tools has been recently widely recognized in both water management and open science. The needs of including the stakeholders (water providers, customers, policy makers, scientists) in the full water management decision process (from model development to decision making) has become more evident. As an example, the European Union specifically supports participatory approaches and evidence-based decision making in water resources management (see e.g. the ICT4Water cluster). In parallel, user-driven virtual water-science laboratories are being developed to encourage more openness in science. The aim is to facilitate sharing of new findings earlier in the discovery process, and to ensure reproducibility of computational experiments.
This session encourages contributions from all over the world where advanced ICT tools have been either developed or applied in an innovative way to support stakeholder involvement and discussion, either for water resources management decisions or news forms of research. The expected ICT tools presented can include:
- Development and experience from using new hydrological software to facilitate water management or research
- Innovative ideas on how to enhance participation in water resources management or virtual water-science laboratories (for example, innovative web-applications).
- Data sharing solutions to facilitate data exchange between researchers, stakeholders, and policy makers.
- ICT tools to better connect different water sectors, such as the well-known water-food-energy nexus.
- ICT tools to overcome geographical distance between scientists in comparative hydrology and to share joint protocols for model inter-comparison projects.
- ICT tools to communicate what water and other natural resources mean to people in terms of survival, economics, beauty and enjoyment.