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

 

 

1.0       Overview

 

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. 

 

2.0              IWMIDSP usage statistics

 

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.

 

 

 

3.0       IWMIDSP as a service to Tsunami disaster response

 

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.
 

4.0       Internal IWMI use of IWMIDSP

 

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 Krishna river basin	Chris Scott/Trent Biggs	Krishna River Basin
4	Drought Assessment and Monitoring	Vladimir Smakhtin	South West Asia
5	Wetland Characterization and mapping	Musta Musiyadama	Limpopo River Basin
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.