Journal article
HYDROLOGICAL MODELING AND CAPACITY BUILDING IN THE REPUBLIC OF NAMIBIA
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol.98(8), pp.1697-1715
08/01/2017
DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00130.1
Abstract
The Republic of Namibia, located along the arid and semiarid coast of southwest Africa, is highly dependent on reliable forecasts of surface and groundwater storage and fluxes. Since 2009, the University of Oklahoma (OU) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have engaged in a series of exercises with the Namibian Ministry of Agriculture, Water, and Forestry to build the capacity to improve the water information available to local decision-makers. These activities have included the calibration and implementation of NASA and OU’s jointly developed Coupled Routing and Excess Storage (CREST) hydrological model as well as the Ensemble Framework for Flash Flood Forecasting (EF5). Hydrological model output is used to produce forecasts of river stage height, discharge, and soil moisture.
To enable broad access to this suite of environmental decision support information, a website, the Namibia Flood Dashboard, hosted on the infrastructure of the Open Science Data Cloud, has been developed. This system enables scientists, ministry officials, nongovernmental organizations, and other interested parties to freely access all available water information produced by the project, including comparisons of NASA satellite imagery to model forecasts of flooding or drought. The local expertise needed to generate and enhance these water information products has been grown through a series of training meetings bringing together national government officials, regional stakeholders, and local university students and faculty. Aided by online training materials, these exercises have resulted in additional capacity-building activities with CREST and EF5 beyond Namibia as well as the initial implementation of a global flood monitoring and forecasting system.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- HYDROLOGICAL MODELING AND CAPACITY BUILDING IN THE REPUBLIC OF NAMIBIA
- Creators
- Robert A. Clark - Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological StudiesZachchary L. Flamig - University of OklahomaHumberto Vergara - Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological StudiesYang Hong - University of OklahomaJonathan J. Gourley - NOAA National Severe Storms LaboratoryDaniel J. Mandl - Goddard Space Flight CenterStuart Frye - Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (United States)Matthew Handy - Goddard Space Flight CenterMaria Patterson - University of Chicago
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol.98(8), pp.1697-1715
- DOI
- 10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00130.1
- ISSN
- 0003-0007
- eISSN
- 1520-0477
- Publisher
- Amer Meteorological Soc
- Number of pages
- 19
- Grant note
- University of Oklahoma NA11OAR4320072 / NOAA/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research under NOAA-University of Oklahoma; National Oceanic Atmospheric Admin (NOAA) - USA U.S. Department of Commerce Open Science Data Cloud, which is an Open Cloud Consortium NNX14AB71G / NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) 1129076 / National Science Foundation; National Science Foundation (NSF) NNM11AB34P / NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984446432902771
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