Delivering Nationwide Water Resources Information through a Single Window
Highlights Esri India helped NWIC to achieve the following objectives:
- Build a comprehensive “Water Resources Information System” (WRIS) in the public domain towards making it easily available to users.
- Provide authoritative, and consistent data and information on India’s water resources and allied themes for planning, development, and management of water resources in the country.
- Development of a decision support system for informed decision making and strengthening the capacity of targeted water resources professionals and management institutions in India.
- Facilitate seamless collaboration with national/ international research institutes and other agencies.
Considering the challenges involved in the water resources sector, the Government of India took an initiative for developing a centralized platform to act as a repository of water resource and related data at the national level with administrative granularity up to the smaller units of governance at the state level as well as hydrological levels such as basin and sub basins.
The first initiative towards the development of a centralized Water Resources information system under the project titled ‘Generation of database and implementation of web enabled water resources information system of India’ short named as India-WRIS WebGIS was undertaken in 2008 through collaborative effort of Central Water Commission (CWC) and National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC). This was a standalone information system built on ArcGIS.
Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India, said, “As the impacts of climate change intensify and the population continues to grow, it becomes increasingly urgent for us to come together to conserve our invaluable water resources. Collaboration on water management creates a ripple effect of positive outcomes, promoting harmony, fostering prosperity, and enhancing resilience. The Indian government is actively taking initiatives such as the Jal Jeevan Mission, Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain Campaign, etc. to preserve the country’s water resources and address the mounting water challenges. GIS technology is at the heart of such government initiatives, playing a vital role in their success. We are closely working with State Water Resource Departments and leading water resource management agencies across the country such as NWIC, NMCG, Thrissur Municipality, Orange City Water (Nagpur), etc., to gain a better understanding of the multidimensional complexities of water ecology, socio-economic challenges of our communities, water quality and other important parameters, and define a long-term view for a sustainable water future.”
Government of India, through Department of Water Resource, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti (erstwhile Ministry of Water Resources, RD & GR) embarked upon a World Bank supported flagship program named National Hydrology Project with the objective of improving the extent, quality, and accessibility of water resource information, decision, basin level resource assessment/planning, development of decision support system and to strengthen the capacity of targeted water resource professionals and management institutions in India.
On this foundation, India WRIS was revamped on the latest version of ArcGIS by integrating with the existing Water Information management System (WIMS) on a nationwide centralized database. A revamped and up-scaled India – WRIS was launched on 30th July 2019.
Esri India offered NWIC a Water Geo-Hub solution that encompassed software, application development, training, handholding, and support services. The solution provides nationwide water information to users through a “single window”, promoting a free exchange of data among various central and state agencies, while delivering reliable and timely data and insights for comprehensive projections of future water, and facilitating informatics based sustainable development of water resource management along with value added products and services to all stakeholders.
