African Water Resource Database Released

19 September 2007, 2:01pm

September 2007 - The African Water Resource Database (AWRD) is a set of data and custom-designed tools, combined in a geographic information system (GIS) analytical framework aimed at facilitating responsible inland aquatic resource management with a specific focus on inland fisheries and aquaculture.

The AWRD was designed based on recommendations of the Committee on Inland Fisheries for Africa (CIFA) and is both an expansion and an update of an earlier project led by the Aquatic Resource Management for Local Community Development Programme (ALCOM) entitled the “Southern African Development Community Water Resource Database” (SADC-WRD).

The publication is presented in two parts in order better to inform readers of various levels of familiarity with the benefits of spatial analysis for aquatic resources management. The first part describes the AWRD and is divided into two main sections. The first presents a general overview and is addressed to administrators and managers while the second is written for professionals in technical fields. The second part is a “how to” supplement and includes a technical manual for spatial analysts and a workbook for university students and teachers.

Publications

Jenness, J.; Dooley, J.; Aguilar-Manjarrez, J.; Riva, C. 2007. African Water Resource Database. GIS-based tools for inland aquatic resource management. 1. Concepts and application case studies CIFA Technical Paper. No. 33, Part 1. Rome, FAO.167p. (also available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a1170e/a1170e00.htm).

Jenness, J.; Dooley, J.; Aguilar-Manjarrez, J.; Riva, C. 2007. African Water Resource Database. GIS-based tools for inland aquatic resource management. 2. Technical manual and workbook. CIFA Technical Paper. No. 33, Part 2. Rome, FAO. 308 p. (also available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0907e/a0907e00.htm).

Data and tools

The primary AWRD interface, toolsets and data integral to the function of the AWRD are distributed in two DVDs accompanying part 2 of this publication and are also available for download from FAO’s GeoNetwork and GISFish GIS portals:

The AWRD archive likely represents the most comprehensive archive of water management and base resource mapping data ever compiled for Africa and available to the public domain. The AWRD data archive includes an extensive collection of datasets covering the African continent, including: surface waterbodies, watersheds, aquatic species, rivers, political boundaries, population density, soils, satellite imagery and many other physiographic and climatological data. Many of the AWRD datasets are global, so the AWRD archive may also prove to be very valuable for studies in other continents.

http://www.fao.org/fi/gisfish/id/2389.

To display and analyse the AWRD archival data, the database also contains a large assortment of new custom applications and tools programmed to run under version 3 of the ArcView GIS software environment (ArcView 3.x). The AWRD tools won 1st and 2nd place in the Avenue category at the 2004 ESRI International User Conference. These AWRD tools add broad functionality and ease of use to ArcView 3.x, and are comprised of 821 scripts, 63 dialogs, and over 53,000 lines of code. This extensive modification essentially adds an entirely self-contained GIS system on top of standard ArcView 3.x. The AWRD tools are generic and can be applied to other regions or countries if the data required to use the tools are available (e.g. a watershed model).

http://www.fao.org/fi/gisfish/id/2393.

Contact

Please send us your feedback to help us improve the AWRD. For feedback and comments on the AWRD please send message to GISFish-Comments@fao.org

The Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service of FAO continuously seeks opportunities to actively cooperate with other organizations in the realm of GIS, remote sensing and mapping, particularly for training to improve the sustainability of aquaculture and inland fisheries. To explore cooperative activities please contact: Jose Aguilar-Manjarrez (FIMA).



José Aguilar-Manjarrez, Ph.D.
Fishery Resources Officer
Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service
Fisheries and Aquaculture Department
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy
Tel. (+39) 06 570 55452
Fax: (+39) 06 570 53020
E-mail: Jose.AguilarManjarrez@fao.org

Spotted by Kate Lance, Editor of the GSDI Association SDI-Africa mailing list

SDI-Africa@lists.gsdi.org
http://lists.gsdi.org/mailman/listinfo/sdi-africa

www.fao.org/fi/gisfish

Geo: International