News
New projects in West Africa
Delft, 8 March 2011 - October 2010 EARS has concluded a contract to implement its Meteosat based drought monitoring and crop yield forecasting system at AGRHYMET in Niamey, Niger. Preparations for this cooperation started already in 2001, but now al hurdles have been taken and the project had its kick-off meeting at the EARS office in Delft on February 7th. The project has an expected duration of 4 years and is enabled by an ORET Grant of the Netherlands Government.
After the successful flow forecasting project in the Yellow River (see below), EARS and UNESCO-IHE are developing similar cooperation with the Niger Basin Authority, also in Niamey, Niger. A proposal was submitted October 2010 to the new Dutch ORIO program for development cooperation. The 4th of March this project was selected for ORIO funding.
EARS is already carrying out micro-insurance projects in West Africa in association with Planet Guarantee in Paris. With the present new projects the company is present with its full line of satellite based climate services in this part of the world.
MoU for Red River signed in Vietnam
Hanoi, 5 October 2009 - In presence of Dutch vice-minister Tineke Huizinga and her Vietnamese colleague Nguyen Thai Lai, an agreement has been signed to cooperate on improving the flow forecasting of the Red River, in the north of Vietnam. Use will be made of satellite based technology developed by EARS and UNESCO-IHE. The Red River is notorious for its violent floods. These have caused 5 billion dollar of economic damage during the past 20 years. Even November last year a large flood did hit the Red River delta. 2600 square km of land were submerged. 120 people died. It was the largest flood ever in Hanoi. Although a range of works have been carried out during the past dekades, such as dyke improvement and creation of water retension basins, floods continue to occur. It remains therefore extremely important to obtain timely information so as to take measures and warn the population. In this respect the current lack of measuring data, particularly from the upper half of the basin, which is situated in China, represents a major challenge. |EARS and UNESCO IHE have developed a flow forecasting system that is based on meteorlogical satellite data. On the basis of these data precipitation and evaporation are mapped across the river basin. These are input of a dedicated distributed hydrological model that calculates the flow at any location in the basin. In this way it is possible to earlier judge and warn for the risk of flooding. This new technology, which is almost independent of ground data, has already succesfully been applied in the Yellow River in China.
Visit Netherlands Minister of Development Cooperation
16 February 2009 - The Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation has awarded the project FESA Micro-Insurance proposed by a consortium of EARS, Ecorys and RABO Development in cooperation with the Micro Insurance Agency (MIA). FESA is the acronym of the initiative Food Early Solutions for Africa and Micro-Insurance is one of the two branches of this initiative, the other one being in the field of crop yield forecasting and providing early food market information. Today Minister Bert Koenders of Development Cooperation visited EARS in Delft and discussed the project with the project partners. EARS will create a climatic data base and provide corresponding monitoring facilities, that will be used to develop a drought insurance product that reaches every farmer in Africa. This product will provide income stability and acces to micro-credit, which allows farmers to invest in better seeds and fertilizer and to increase their production. With offices in India and Africa, partner MIA is already one of the major players in the micro-insurance field. For EARS the project is a new and challenging application of its climatic monitoring technology. Minister Koenders handed over a deed showing the FESA project to become one of the Millennium agreements between the Dutch government and the private sector. See the video report at:
First satellite based river flow forecasting system operational
EARS and UNESCO-IHE have completed the development of the first satellite based water resources monitoring and river runoff forecasting system in the world. The system has been operationally implemented at the Hydrological Bureau of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission in Zhengzhou. It is based on the EWBMS climatic data collection system, developed by EARS, and a dedicated Large Scale Hydrological Model (LSHM) developed by UNESCO-IHE. The system is capable of monitoring climatic, hydrological and agriculural drought throughout the Yellow River basin, and predicts river flow in two of the main tributaries: the Upper Reach and the Weihe River, each over 100.000 km2. Flow validation results are good (R2=0.8, low volume errors), even although almost no ground data are used. The system shows great potential in other river basins which are badly measured, or where there is little access to (transboundary) data. The final report of the project will be available February 2009.
EWBMS-LSHM flow simulation (blue) for the Weihe river at Lintong and at Huaxian, the outlet of the basin, compared with the observed flow (black)