Commission for hydrology
WMO Congress, Executive Council, and Presidents of Technical Commission Meetings
Download 211.38 Kb.
|
WMO Congress, Executive Council, and Presidents of Technical Commission Meetings4. During the seventeenth session of Congress (Cg-17) in 2015, I reported on the alignment of CHy activities with WMO priorities. Particular focus was given to how the ongoing work within our Quality Management Framework – Hydrology, and Data Operations and Management thematic areas were directly supporting the implementation of WIGOS and WIS; how our Hydrological Forecasting and Prediction, Water Resources Assessment, and Water, Climate and Risk Assessment themes supported WMO’s Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts; and how a very broad suit of nearly all of our thematic activities supported the Global Framework for Climate Services. These linkages were also highlighted and reinforced at Executive Council (EC) and Presidents of Technical Commission (PTC) meetings. 5. CHy’s support for WIGOS and WIS is manifest in our activities associated with ensuring data quality and the use of standards, in our project to assess the performance and uncertainty of flow measurement instruments and techniques, and in our production of guidance materials and training. Perhaps of more significance, however, has been the establishment of the WMO Hydrological Observing System (WHOS), which is the centerpiece of the CHy contribution to WIGOS. WHOS is conceived as a portal to facilitate access to already available on-line real-time and historical data, drawing from the water information systems of countries around the world that make their data freely and openly available, including HYCOS projects. An initial phase of WHOS has already been implemented. At this session, the Commission is being presented with a vision of a second phase of WHOS that will facilitate a fully WIS compliant services-oriented framework linking hydrologic data providers and users through a hydrologic information system enabling data registration, data discovery, and data access. This element is a realization of what CHy-14 aimed to achieve with its resolution to evaluate WaterML-2.0, and is a validation of the success of that process. In four short years, we have gone from virtually no engagement with WIGOS and WIS to being one of their premier components. 6. Our efforts in Disaster Risk Reduction have continued to advance steadily and to be recognized by others within WMO. The Flood Forecasting Initiative Advisory Group (FFI-AG), established by Congress in 2011 (Resolution 15 (Cg-XVI)), held its first two meetings during the period. The first one focused on the development of a workplan containing nine broad activities. At the second meeting, the Group concluded that the initial workplan was too ambitious and lacked focus. It then sharpened and simplified the workplan around four tractable tasks for the period 2016-2019: (1) ensure that all major demonstration projects and components, including but not limited to FFGS, CIFDP, SWFDP, include the requirements/best practices for effective and sustainable flood forecasting in their design and implementation; (2) ensure guidance material is available for NMHSs and for donors, NGOs, and other organizations working to strengthen flood forecasting capabilities in national services; (3) facilitate the development of an inventory of existing training programmes and related reference materials across the entire spectrum of training needs for end-to-end (E2E) systems for flood forecasting, identifying weaknesses/gaps, and recommending development of additional materials to overcome weaknesses/fill gaps; and (4) ensure access to guidance material and trainings through the IFM HelpDesk. 7. In addition to the progress made in the Flood Forecasting Initiative, including expanded applications of the Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS), one of our Advisory Working Group members became Co-chairperson of the Coastal Inundation Forecasting Demonstration Project (CIFDP). This has significantly enhanced the recognition of CHy activities related to coastal flooding and made the Commission a full and recognizable partner in this highly visible project. It has also given us an important capability to influence the direction of CIFDP priorities. 8. One final aspect of the CHy programme having relevance to the DRR priority has been its efforts in Water Resources Assessment. After many years of work, a draft of the Manual on Water Resources Assessment has been completed and should be published in 2017. The contents of this report, in addition to providing NHSs with distinct guidance on how to assess their water resources situation at varying temporal scales, will also provide tools for gaining insight into flood and drought risk at shorter time scales (daily to weekly). In a related development, CHy-15 will discuss an interesting proposal to take the activities in this area to a more global and dynamic level. The proposed initiative, a WMO global hydrological status and outlook system, aims to develop a worldwide operational system, at monthly timescales that is capable of providing: (1) an indication of current global hydrological conditions (including river flow, groundwater level, and soil moisture); (2) an appraisal of where this status departs significantly from ‘normal’; and (3) an assessment of where conditions are likely to get worse over coming weeks and months. Such a system is not currently available and would provide unique and invaluable information to government organizations responsible for disaster risk reduction and water management, as well as regional and international aid agencies. 9. The third major WMO priority that CHy supported in a significant way was the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). In 2014, the GFCS Implementation Plan was published wherein five critical components (pillars) were identified: capacity development; research, modeling and prediction, observations and monitoring, climate services information system, and a user interface platform. Notably, nearly all of our thematic areas as well as many of our focused activities support one or more of the GFCS pillars. In capacity development, for example, our Strategy for Education and Training in HWR, WHOS, WHYCOS, the new Global Hydrometry Support Facility, the Flood Forecasting Initiative, Seasonal Hydrological Prediction, the APFM and IDMP, and QMF-Hydrology are all providing results that materially enhance the ability of NMHSs to meet GFCS objectives. Similarly, in each of the other four pillars, multiple CHy programmes are supporting climate services efforts. Thus, CHy is providing one of the broadest suites of support to GFCS among technical commissions. Download 211.38 Kb. Share with your friends:
|