GEOGloWS ECMWF Global Streamflow Service

The Availability of Water is becoming less predictable, and increased incidences of flooding threaten to destroy water sanitation facilities, contaminate water sources, and commerce disruption. In a research note published June 14, 2021, analysts at Barclays identified water scarcity as “the most important environmental concern” for the global consumer staples sector. Human behavior needs to be modified to reduce resource unpredictability. Still, more importantly, innovation and technology must be developed to achieve Analysis Ready Data (ARD) and provide timely and actionable information through services that help alleviate unpredictability stresses. Forecasting hydrological extremes information will reduce uncertainty and make informed decisions and develop data-driven strategies.

The GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Service uses a Hydrologic Modeling as a Service (HMaaS) approach, which centralizes the cyberinfrastructure, human expertise, and other components of hydrologic modeling using the global forecasts and expertise available, along with the latest advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). GEOGloWS delivers reliable river discharge forecast information as a service worldwide, spares users from the resource-consuming tasks necessary to gather, analyze, and process all the underlying data that must otherwise be synthesized and computed locally.

The GEOGloWS-ECMWF global streamflow forecasting allows local stakeholders to develop tailored applications to solve water management problems such as flooding, drought, and water/food/energy security issues. The GEOGloWS-ECMWF forecast service requires and leverages the local data and local expertise to tailor the global forecast to local applications. This interaction provides a unique and complementary framework that empowers local experts and decision-makers for more in-depth analyses at the local level.

The forecasted information can be accessed through web services without the need for expensive infrastructure. The service provides short and long-range forecasts for every river in the world every day and 40 years of simulated historical data. For low and middle-income countries and communities, this service represents a breakthrough complementing their national efforts resulting in better operation of dams, irrigation systems, and flood management. The service promotes Data Democracy and provides equality as every country, organization, and citizen has access to the same information.

Project Impact

Between 2000 and 2050, water demand is projected to grow by 55% (OCDE), increasing competition for the resource among the water consumer sectors. Knowledge on Forecasting hydrological extremes will assist decision-makers in determining the most efficient allocation of the resource among the consumer sectors. It is paramount to achieve Water Security, which is to provide sufficient water quantity and quality to sustain livelihoods, ecosystems, and production while balancing acceptable water-related risks to people, environments, and economics.

One of the most critical impacts is in allocating investment to produce the hydrological forecasting information necessary for disaster mitigation and water resources planning in general. In the past, millions of dollars have been invested by international and local agencies to develop hydrologic models that can provide necessary information locally. Local hydrologic models are valuable, but require each agency to acquire/download large amounts of data (e.g., terrain information, land use, meteorological, and more) to create hydrologic models, and then have the computational power, software, and human capacity to set up, calibrate, and operationalize them. Even then, such models are often very limited in capability or spatial extent. Replicating this everywhere is expensive in terms of the cyber infrastructure required. Still more costly are the unrealized benefits as such systems frequently have short useful life spans because of the costs to maintain and operate them.

The need for effective water management cuts through every segment of society without political boundaries. The GEOGloWS-ECMWF global streamflow forecasting service serves as the foundation for activities connected with a holistic approach for sustainable development, supporting the Water-Energy-Food-Disaster (WEFD) Nexus, and provides water intelligence to government and sectors such as the insurance and reinsurance industry, agriculture, disaster risk reduction, transportation, and many others taking high-risk investment decisions.

The GEOGloWS-ECMWF service is a disruptive technology that has already proven its value through several piloted regions, helping to convert resources traditionally invested in creating adequate information to a focus on capacity building that improves local expertise and decision making.

With the proposed investment, the GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Services would be a sustainable solution to transform the hydrologic information services marketplace.

Project timeline

Background

• 2014: Visits to the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the European Union Joint Research Center (JRC) gave birth to the idea that the same forecasts being used for the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service could be used to create a high-resolution National Water Model (NWM) at US National Water Center (NWC).

• 2014-2016: An experiment at the US NWC demonstrated that the ECMWF forecast combined with the RAPID routing model could be used to build a NWM.

• 2016-2017: Funded NASA project: BYU builds NWM prototype for South Asia (Nepal, India, Bangladesh area). At the inaugural GEOGloWS Initiative meeting, BYU researchers are challenged to take the South Asia prototype and expand it to global coverage. Second NASA funding: BYU stands up the GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Services globally and Esri develops the mapping and programmatic (API) access services.

• 2019 - Present: World Bank-funded Aquaveo to conduct capacity building for the national hydrometeorological services of Central America, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, India, Afghanistan, and others to use the GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Services.

• 2020: World Bank funded the migration of the GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Services from the experimental research cyberinfrastructure at BYU to the Linux cluster environment at ECMWF. Additional improvements to streamline the services were added.

  Link to announcement of GEOGloWS ECMWF Streamflow Service

• November 2020 - Present: Continuous and stable production at ECMWF as a quasi-operational service. Significant uptake and use of the services in many countries including the Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Tanzania, Israel, Gaza, India, Afghanistan, and others. Development of additional tools that allow local users to improve the forecasts by combining with their own in situ measurements.

Going forward as we scale up

During the duration of the service, ECMWF will be in charge of all operational activities (continuous production, maintenance, support and upgrades). ECMWF will collaborate with Aquaveo and the GEOGloWS community to make contributions to the knowledge learning center on forecast generation, application, interpretation and guidance, and actively engage users for co-design and prioritization of development activities to help shape future service evolution.

The following provides a rough timeline:

• 2022: Migration of the full production and dissemination system into the new High Performance Computing environment of ECMWF. Delivery of a continuous service provision as a fully 24/7 operational service. Adaptation of workflows and software for enhanced scalability and computing efficiency within ECMWF’s environment. Improved and evolving security patches and testing.

• 2023: Extension of the service to near real-time streamflow global monitoring, seamless forecasting from 1 day to several months, and publicly availability of streamflow forecast catalogues and reference simulations through to any cloud dissemination service. This will enable local verification, extreme event identification, and scenario exploration for local planning and adaptation decision making. Provision of relevant skill information to enhance user confidence in the service.

• 2024-25: Development of user-defined applications, user engagement and capacity building. Envisaged areas of development include flood inundation mapping, hydrological drought and water scarcity and river water pollution and quality (e.g. macro plastic, water temperature, sediment).

• 2026-27: Integration of innovative approaches for merging local information within streamflow forecasts.

• 2027-32: Ensure service in place for academics, governments, and the private market can build decision support tools with confidence. Continue to operate the service, adapt the latest technologies, and provide capacity building and support.