Interim FR Evaluation (FR2)

Title of the Project
Project Leader

Designing Local Frameworks for Integrated Water Resources
Management
WATANABE Tsugihiro

General advice and comments of PEC:
This project tries to integrate local knowledge on water resource management through local casestudies and hydrological modeling on global scale. The vision of the project is too abstract, while it
may still meet RIHN’s fundamental missions. Moreover, the project does not have concrete structure
and methodology to accomplish its objectives. More precisely, 1) there is no clear rational explanation
on selection of the present four sites, 2) field study is not designed in a way to collect data on
humanities aspects and there are so far only few anthropological research made in this project, 3)
research methods are not clear, especially it is difficult to understand the stance of the global model.
PEC strongly recommends further clarification on project methodology, structure and goals before
moving forward to the next step. Furthermore, PEC also believes that there is a need to re-structure andeven reduce the number of sites to be able to conduct sound comparative research and reach eligible
local level data.

ReplyIn response to “General advice and comments of PEC”, considering two essential requirements ofRIHN Initiative-based projects, 1) integration and 2) co-creation between science and society, we
re-clarified the objectives of our project and re-crystallized directions and organizational structure, asfollows:
1) Rationality of selection of the current four sites
We prioritize and focus more on Indonesia as a platform for implementing collaboration between
science and society. There, we have already started attempts at integrated water management throughco-creation with various stakeholders at local level. We’ll apply the outcomes from Indonesia to theother areas, such as Turkey, Egypt and Japan. In addition to this regional scheme, organizing
cross-cutting working groups based on subjects will drive mutual comparison and integration among
local sites. As one of Initiative-based projects, we integrate outcomes from other RIHN projects fromthe viewpoint of IWRM. This helps us develop a GIS application “water management atlas”,
consisting of useful information for local management, such as land use change, societal transition,
flood and drought damage, etc., as one manifestation of integration.
2) Implementation of humanities and anthropological aspects
We requested one professor, a core project member and anthropologist, to contribute more to theprogress of our project. We will also invite one senior researcher from Indonesia, who has been
actually practicing co-creation between science and society and working with several stakeholders, tobecome project co-leader. Besides, we plan to recruit another project researcher who specializes inhumanities and anthropological areas.
3) Clarification of the stance of the global model
The global model is supposed to be an integrated product of the co-creation in Indonesia as well
as a basic tool to design water management in other study areas. We developed a novel integrated
model that dynamically describes the interaction between different stakeholders and their natural andsocietal environments to assess possible strategies, which will be able to sustain local water availability
for a changing future.