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The Global Earth Observation
System of Systems Asian
Water Cycle Initiative
Observation Convergence andData Integration(GEOSS/AWCI/OCDI)
Progress Report for Year 1of APN CAPaBLE Project:
CBA2008-12NMY-Ishida

The following collaborators worked on this project:
Chu Ishida, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), JapanIshida.chu@jaxa.jp
Toshio Koike, University of Tokyo, Japan,
tkoike@hydra.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Global Earth Observation System of Systems Asian Water
Cycle Initiative Observation Convergence and Data
Integration (GEOSS/AWCI/OCDI)

Project Reference Number: CBA2008-12NMY-Ishida
Progress Report Submitted to APN for Year 1 Activities©Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Researchwww.apn-gcr.org

Part One: Overview of project work and outcomes
1. Introduction and background:
Water comprises the most basic and critical component of all aspects ofhuman life and is an indispensable component of the global life support system. On
the whole, the water environment is characterized by the hydrological cycle,including floods and droughts. The widespread scarcity, gradual destruction andaggravated pollution of water resources in many world regions have triggered arange of water crises. Nowadays, many water related problems, particularly
drinking water pollution, are being reported in various Asian countries. Healthdamage due to arsenic polluted drinking water is one of such problems. There is anurgent need for international cooperation to overcome the problems and secure thesafe and sustainable groundwater utilization. Additionally, global climate change
and atmospheric pollution could also have an impact on water resources and theiravailability.
About 60 % of the World population lives in Asia, and their various social
activities including agriculture depend on the bountiful Monsoon rain. At the sametime, the vast water cycle variation in Asia can be the cause of droughts and floods,
and consequently, may be responsible for an enormous amount of human andeconomic damage.
To establish a comprehensive, coordinated and sustained earth observation
scheme, an agreement for a 10-Year Implementation Plan for a Global Earth
Observation System of Systems, known as GEOSS, was reached at the Third Earth
Observation Summit held in Brussels, in February 2005; on that occasion the Groupon Earth Observation (GEO) was also formally established. “Improving water
resource management through better understanding of the water cycle” has been
agreed to as one of the targeted societal benefit areas of GEOSS.
The guiding goal of this project is to better understand the mechanism ofvariability in the Asian water cycle and to improve its predictability, andfurthermore to interpret the information applicable to various water environments
in different countries in Asia, then to help to mitigate water-related disasters andpromote the efficient use of water resources.
2. Participating countries:
The GEOSS/AWCI/OCDI involves many Asian countries including but notlimited to: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea,Lao, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
3. Objectives:
The aim is to develop an information system of systems for promoting theimplementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM) through data
integration and sharing and improvement of understanding and prediction of thewater cycle variation as a basis for sound decision making of national water policies
and management strategies.
The project contributes to the AWCI objectives that include:
1. To develop Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approaches;
2. To share timely, quality, long-term information on water quantity and quality,
and their variation as a basis for sound national and regional decision making;3. To construct a comprehensive, coordinated and sustained observational systemof systems, such as prediction systems and decision support capabilities, under theGEOSS;
4. To develop capacity building for making maximum use of globally integrated dataand information for local purposes as well as for observation and collecting data.

Progress Report14. Funding received for 2008/2009:
USD 60,000?30,000?37,500? Should be amount received for the first year only!
5. Outcomes and products against original proposal objectives:
A kick-off plenary meeting, that included AWCI International Coordination
Group (ICG) members, was held at the occasion of the 4th Conference of the Asia
Pacific Association of Hydrology and Water Resources (APHW), in Beijing, China, 35 November, 2008. A full day special session on AWCI was held on 5 November andthe 3rd meeting of the AWCI followed at the same venue on 6 November.
The AWCI special session included the following four topics that are theAWCI major focus areas: (1) Floods and Landslides, (2) Draught and Water Scarcity,(3) Water Pollution and Ecosystem Degradation, and (4) Climate Change Impacts
on Water Cycle. It was mutually beneficial and useful for the AWCI ICG members tocontribute to the APHW special session by introducing their scientific activities toscience communities in Asia and exchange and share their ideas and experiences.
The 3rd AWCI/ICG meeting reviewed the progress since the AWCI
Implementation Plan was developed and accepted at the 3rd Asian Water Cycle
Symposium, Beppu, Japan, December 2-4, 2007. The participants updated thestatus of AWCI Demonstration Projects for 18 river basins in the participating
countries including the status of metadata and data archiving and data qualitycheck. The participants agreed to reinforce data collection and quality check for theAWCI Demonstration Projects (DPs). Ten out of the 18 river basins are now readyto upload raw observation data. The activities of the three AWCI Working Groups(WGs), namely Flood and Landslides, Drought and Water Scarcity, and Water
Quality, were also reviewed and it was proposed and agreed to establish the fourth
WG on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation. WGs identified priority activities
and agreed to develop their implementation plan at next ICG meeting that isscheduled to take place in Kyoto, Japan, 6 – 7 February 2009 in conjunction withthe 3rd GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium.
In addition, two related capacity building workshops were held in Indonesia(July) and Bangladesh (August) in the form of training programs that addressed
rainfall downscaling, hydrological modeling, flood risk management, etc.
Conclusions of the capacity building workshops and initial outcomes of thedemonstration projects were reported at the 3rd AWCI/ICG meeting in Beijing.
Development of further training modules and their integration for the DPs are being
implemented.
Also, detailed hydrological models were developed for the DPs of four river
basins (the Tone River (Japan), Meghna River (Bangladesh), Pampanga River(Philippines), and Huong River (Vietnam). The usage of distributed hydrologicalmodel showed significant advantage of such modeling technique for water resource
management and disaster risk reduction.
6. Self evaluation of work performed to date:
The first year of the project has been successful in transferring fromplanning to implementation. Since the beginning of 2008, meta-data and dataarchiving and data quality check for the 18 demonstration river basins has started.
Development of training modules and their integration for the demonstration
projects are being implemented. Applications of newly developed distributedhydrological models to the four demonstration river basins showed significant
advantage of such modeling technique for water resource management anddisaster risk reduction. These GEOSS/AWCI/OCDI project activities havesignificantly contributed to the AWCI Demonstration Projects and Capacity Building
plan implementation (http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/AWCI/).

Progress Report2