Pilot Study on Indicators for the World Water Assessment Programme

The UN World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is the flagship program of UN-Water. Housed in UNESCO, WWAP’s primary product, the World Water Development Report (WWDR), is a periodic, comprehensive review providing an authoritative picture of the state of the world’s freshwater resources. However, the data that is needed to create such a summary is lacking or of poor quality in many parts of the world, and even then it usually is not in a format where it can be directly used to answer the questions that water professionals and policy-makers are asking.

One of ICIWaRM’s contributions to the WWAP has been to fund a Pilot Study on Indicators to generate measures of water supply, water scarcity, weather extremes, and links to the economic sector, for inclusion in the World Water Development Report series. Such a process exploits to the highest degree possible available digital geospatial and Earth system science data sets, amplifying their value through combination with in situ monitoring, survey results, and national-scale statistics. The core goal is to develop the pilot study through a consultative process leading to an integrated global data compendium and toolset. These would be organized as a set of electronic maps and representing to the highest degree possible a definitive, comprehensive, and up-to-date picture of the state of the hydrologic systems and affiliated world water resources, their accessibility and use by society.

For further information, please contact the WWAP Secretariat at wwap@unesco.org.