WaterWorld

WaterWorld: Spatial policy support tool for sustainable development

WaterWorld enables intended and unintended consequences to be tested in silico before they are tested in vivo. WaterWorld can also be used to understand the hydrological and water resources baseline and water risk factors associated with specific activities under current conditions and under scenarios for land use, land management and climate change. WaterWorld integrates models and data from numerous sources including satellite data sets of forest area, land cover, human settlements.

Application

The WaterWorld freely available web based tool is focused on bridging the gap from scientific data and knowledge to policy and management decision-making by building and deploying data-intensive, science-based spatial policy support systems (PSS). The WaterWorld model has been used by over 1000 organisations in more than 140 countries. Users are mostly from conservation and development NGOs but also NGO policy analysts, agriculture and industry (e.g. extractives) organisations, education and academic research. The WaterWorld website lists nearly 50 use cases, across the globe. Examples include water quality, water based ecosystem services, impacts of land use change and climate, and impacts of mining and deforestation.

Using WaterWorld to understand current and future ecosystem services in the Volta basin

The issue: The tropical savannas of Burkina Faso are under pressure from seasonal water scarcity, climate change and demographic shifts that place stress on local livelihoods and ecosystems. While agriculture represents the main economic activity in Burkina Faso, the rainfed growing season is only 3-5 months long. Small reservoirs can transform livelihoods by reducing dry season water constraints and opening up new fish, livestock, and crop production opportunities. Since the 1900s, over 700 small reservoirs have been established across the country. Yet, declining water supplies, water and land use conflicts, poor market access and unsustainable crop production practices have left many people with the unfulfilled promise of food security and market returns from improved agricultural yields

The solution: As part of this project, King’s College London, delivered a training workshop on 14 February 2018 at SNV World office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on applying the WaterWorld and Co$tingNature ecosystem service assessment tools with a focus on the wider Volta basin. A total of 16 participants included representatives from the agricultural research institute, the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use, the Volta basin authority as well as a number of students from the University of Ouaga I.

• Using WaterWorld to understand current and future ecosystem services in the Volta basin

UK expertise

• WaterWater has been developed by King’s College London (applications, data, models), AmbioTEK (software, data, models).

The model incorporates the latest detailed (global) spatial (EO) datasets at high resolution and spatial models for biophysical and socio-economic processes along with scenarios for climate, land use and economic change.

• Spatial datasets: at 1-square km and 1 hectare resolution.
• Coverage: entire world.
• Models: spatial models for biophysical and socio-economic processes along with scenarios for climate, land use and economic change. A series of interventions (policy options) are available which can be implemented and their consequences traced through the socio-economic and biophysical systems.
• Data integration: Data for application of this model anywhere globally (from remote sensing and other global sources) is provided but users can also use this model with their own datasets. Application with the provided datasets takes only half an hour and requires no GIS capacity. Bringing in user datasets will take much longer depending on the availability, level of processing, format and consistency of those datasets and also requires GIS capacity.
• Satellite data sets: In terms of EO data used, there are many EO derived datasets used in WaterWorld but to name a few:
• Global Forest Change data, used for baseline forest cover and scenario modelling of land use change within WaterWorld. Turubanova, S., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D., Stehman, S.V., Goetz, S.J., Loveland, T.R. and Kommareddy, A., 2013. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. science, 342(6160), pp.850-853.
• MODIS land cover data (VCF), used for determining type of vegetation (forest, bare, herbaceous covers). Reference: DiMiceli, C.M., M.L. Carroll, R.A. Sohlberg, C. Huang, M.C. Hansen, and J.R.G. Townshend (2011), Annual Global Automated MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (MOD44B) at 250 m Spatial Resolution for Data Years Beginning Day 65, 2000 – 2010, Collection 5 Percent Tree Cover, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
• MODIS MOD 35 Cloud Mask. Used for calculating solar radiation for the evapotranspiration calculations.
• LandSAT human settlement layers. Used for urban land use.
• Access: The model integrates with a range of geobrowsers for immersive visualisation of outcomes.

The WaterWorld team does not primarily develop datasets but uses what is already available. As such the team is an integrator and user.

In terms of the future, for many EO datasets, higher resolutions are becoming available which is a significant benefit. Since WaterWorld mainly uses derived EO products (e.g. on landcover or climate surfaces) it does depend on when or if raw satellite data is made available globally by other organisations in a consistent and usable format and if these datasets will be updated (e.g. Global Forest Change data) as the programme does not focus on creating data from raw satellite images. For climate data, WaterWorld uses longer term climatologies (at least a decade) so the newest data is not always directly of use.

Team insight

Arnout van Soesbergen (arnout.van_soesbergen@kcl.ac.uk ) is a physical geographer with broad research interests in hydrology, land use change modelling, ecology, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Arnout currently works on the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation funded project which aims to influence the development and implementation of international ecosystem service payment schemes in the interests of poverty alleviation with a particular focus on Madagascar. His work mainly focuses around the development and implementation of the web-based policy support systems WaterWorld and Co$tingNature.

Research papers

• Mulligan, M., 2013. WaterWorld: a self-parameterising, physically based model for application in data-poor but problem-rich environments globally. Hydrology Research, 44(5): 748-769.
• Van Soesbergen, A.J.J. and Mulligan, M., 2014. Modelling multiple threats to water security in the Peruvian Amazon using the WaterWorld policy support system. Earth System Dynamics, 5(1): 55.