Impact Assessment Report
IWMI’s Data and Knowledge Storehouse Pathway (IWMIDSP)
Gateway to Remote Sensing and GIS data on River Basins, Nations, Regions, and the World
The IWMI’s Data and Knowledge Storehouse Pathway (IWMIDSP) was launched in June 2004. From then to now, IWMIDSP (http://www.iwmidsp.org) has evolved as a pathfinder in providing free global and local level remote sensing and GIS (RS/GIS) datasets of high scientific quality. The overarching goal of IWMIDSP is to become the # 1 RS/GIS data and knowledge center on selected benchmark river basins of the World. But also to provide data and products of rich scientific merit on Nations, regions, and the Globe and make significant contribution to Global Public Goods and hence serve Global Research Community. Currently, IWMIDSP hosts about 1.4 terabytes of data and products for river basins, Nations, regions, and the entire Globe.
Please refer to a separate document entitled “International Water Management Institute’s Data Storehouse Pathway (IWMIDSP): A Gateway to Remote Sensing and GIS data on River Basins, Nations, Regions, and the World” on the purpose, goals, state-of-art, and vision of IWMIDSP.
In just about 6 months, the number of visitors in a month have reached over 2000 (see Jan-05 in Table 1 and Figure 1) with visitors from over 80 Countries (Figure 2). About half a million hits have been recorded and the number of pages visited is nearing 190,000. But what is astounding is the volume of data downloaded-that was nearly a terabyte in December and around 280 GB in March. These statistics will make even a major data provider proud.
Table 1. IWMIDSP Data usage statistics by external (outside IWMI) users.
|
Period (MM/YY) |
Unique
Visitors |
No. of
Visits |
No. of
Pages |
No. of
Hits |
Total Download
(GB)* |
|
Jun-04 |
349 |
837 |
29160 |
12847 |
2.98 |
|
Jul-04 |
480 |
1013 |
10871 |
45921 |
2.77 |
|
Aug-04 |
380 |
713 |
5692 |
23725 |
5.01 |
|
Sep-04 |
357 |
691 |
8148 |
41931 |
105.56 |
|
Oct-04 |
559 |
826 |
5372 |
24758 |
9.94 |
|
Nov-04 |
762 |
1110 |
7608 |
39044 |
14.02 |
|
Dec-04 |
1008 |
1498 |
9234 |
47989 |
980.17 |
|
Jan-05 |
2309 |
3577 |
16517 |
96983 |
256.63 |
|
Feb-05 |
1981 |
2949 |
15720 |
72133 |
79.84 |
|
Mar-05 |
2034 |
2748 |
12925 |
54297 |
279.66 |
|
Apr-05 |
2928 |
3878 |
15482 |
69275 |
162.69 |
|
May-05 |
2990 |
3831 |
15093 |
68748 |
122.67 |
|
Jun-05 |
2873 |
3890 |
17440 |
80938 |
200.55 |
|
Jul-05 |
1794 |
2536 |
10247 |
64400 |
88.54 |
|
Aug-05 |
1617 |
2256 |
10241 |
65624 |
63.96 |
|
Grand
Total |
22421 |
32353 |
189750 |
808613 |
2374.99 |
Note: * = in addition there is physically transfers of data @ IWMI HQ and to IWMI Regional Offices, various Organizations, and individuals on personal requests which many times is several gigabytes.
Figure 1. Unique users in each month since IWMIDSP launched in June, 2004. Nearly 3000 visitors from 86 Countries visited IWMIDSP in April 2005.
Figure 2. Number of Countries visiting IWMIDSP month-by-month.
The IWMIDSP played a significant role in producing rapid
action Tsunami maps (see statistics of these maps in Figure 3). Over 300 maps of
various categories (e.g., Figure 4) were produced and released for the benefit
of aid organizations, National Government, International organizations, and the
NGO’s. The Tsunami response also increased the traffic on IWMIDSP in January
2005 (see Figure 1 and 2). The early Tsunami rapid response, is now taken over
by more detailed post-Tsunami mapping based on field work by various IWMI
researchers (e.g., Figure 5) and high resolution remote sensing efforts (see
Figure 6).

Figure 3. Tsunami map statistics based on themes. There are, for example, 33 maps so far on affected infrastructure.

Figure 4. Rapid response to Tsunami through map information. Two examples shown are: damage to infrastructure (left) and causalities (right) mapped with geographic precision. There are now about 200 different types of maps produced by IWMI-MapAction-CNO made available through: http://www.iwmidsp.org.

Figure 5. Areas of
Tsunami damage and the GNs affected.
Internally, IWMIDSP provides critical data needed for various projects and thematic research (see Table 2).
Table 2. IWMIDSP data use in IWMI research projects.
Sl # IWMI Projects Project Leaders Area Coverage 1 Global
map of Irrigated Areas (GIAM) Hugh
Turral Entire
Globe 2 IWMI and
CP Benchmark River Basin baseline datasets and characterization Many Ruhuna
basin (Sri Lanka), Krishna basin (India), Olifants (South Africa), Rachna
Doab (Pakistan), Limpopo (South Africa), Sao Franscisco (Brazil), Nile (10
Countries), Volta (cote Voire), Yellow river (China), Mekong (4
Countries), Indo-Gangetic (India-Pakistan), Karkey (Iran), and virtual
Andes (several Countries) 3 Hydrological and land use studies in
Chris
Scott/Trent Biggs 4 Drought
Assessment and Monitoring Vladimir
Smakhtin South
5 Wetland
Characterization and mapping Musta
Musiyadama 6 Expansion
without extension (Biodiversity Project) Rebecca
Tharme Udawalawe
Leftbank Extension 8 Global
modeling Charlotte
de Fraiture Entire
Globe


Figure 6. Pre-Tsunami and Post-Tsunami images in Eastern Sri Lanka from QuickBird 0.61-2.44-m resolution satellite images. These images are currently catalogued for IWMIDSP.
The Tsunami
maps produced by IWMI have been hosted and/or published by many web sites around
the world. These include:
http://csi.cgiar.org/tsunami.asp
http://polarbear.css.cornell.edu/srilanka/
Ever since
IWMIDSP has been released, we have received many positive comments and feedback.
IWMIDSP can
certainly compete to be the data and knowledge bank with lowest investment
producing highest number of science quality data and products and making them
freely available as a Global Public Goods. It is working against steep odds of
hosting such a site in a developing Country and serving the World. The
tremendous odds of dealing with bandwidths, storage and backup solutions are
overwhelming. Yet, the peers who understand what is achieved against these odds
have spoken out for IWMIDSP:
“I just cant say enough positive things about the
site....what is very striking to me, is...this is probably the very first time
that all these great sources of data and information and decision support
systems have made all their great work available free of charge and in formats
that all can understand....it is truly impressive...”
– John G Lyon, Director,
USEPA,
“You guys are doing a great job.
Best UN or similar GIS site I
ever seen. Very useful for the RS and GIS user”. - Keith Forbes,
Economic Affairs Officer, UN ECA,
“My personal experience of MapAction's and IWMI's activity
whilst in the CNO confirmed that IWMI’s generous gift of geospatial data of
“Thank you for providing excellent spatial data to the
public. This is useful for our co-operation with
“Hats off for your work on remote
sensing and GIS portal”. - Dr. PLN Raju, Department of
“Great work - Keep going - you
are all doing a fantastic job!” - Rebecca Tharme, Researcher, IWMI,
Appendix I
Websites and maps servers who have hosted IWMIDSP
resources and appeared in the their
pages
5. IKONOS Images of the study area
No Data in archive
Cost of programming high (exact figure will be sent by data provider soon).