SASWE Home

02/10/2021

Several exciting changes have happened since the last update in 2019. All the SASWE developed tools and portals are now organized on a single page at http://depts.washington.edu/saswe/ and http://www.saswe.net/models . These are the two landing pages where new models or tools will be added as they become operational.

01/15/2021

A new smart irrigation advisory system that tracks plot scale water use and irrigation status of farmers in Bangladesh has been launched for Bangladesh Department of Agricultural Extension. Check http://depts.washington.edu/saswe/dae

10/10/2020

The world’s first operational cloud computing driven reservoir monitoring tool called RAT (Reservoir Assessment Tool) is now live for 1598 reservoirs of the world. Most of the reservoirs are located in ungauged basins that lack in-situ data.

02/11/19

SASWE group launched another co-developed system for a stakeholder nation. The flashflood and early warning system for the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (Ministry of Water Resources and Bangladesh Water Development Board-BWDB) was launched for trial in 2019. The system, which is computationally efficient and forecasts inundation at 30 m resolution, was co-designed and co-developed in close collaboration with engineers and hydrologists of BWDB. After a successful trial in 2019, BWDB is expected to adopt it within its operational infrastructure and offer the flashflood warning as a service to about 40 million affected citizens on a SASWE developed smartphone app called LIQUID EARTH. Flashfloods in the Northeastern region strike around the harvest time of March-April for Boro rice. Skillful flashflood forecasting as a service to millions of farmers is therefore expected to have a positive impact on the food security of Bangladesh by minimizing flashflood damage to Boro rice that accounts for the lion share of annual rice production Bangladesh.

07/15/2018

SASWE Research Group co-developed and launched two more water forecasting systems for Vietnam agencies. These systems are: NUMOS and NAWAPI with new functionality for monitoring of transboundary reservoirs. This is the world's first beta-testing of an operational transboundary reservoir monitoring system based on earth observations.

06/16/2018

Advanced Water Forecasting System developed and launched by Bangladesh Water Development Board. This system is co-developed with technical assistance from SASWE Research Group and is now independently maintained with local resources of the Bangladesh Water Board.

12/07/2017

Decision Support System for Smart Dam Operations for Hydropower Maximization launched by SASWE Group – http://depts.washington.edu/saswe/damdss. The Smart Dam DSS is based on SASWE member Shahryar Ahmad’s MS thesis that investigated the value of weather forecast for hydropower maximization. It is currently operational for Detroit Dam in Oregon. Stay tuned for SASWE group’s plan for scaling up in US and developing nations.

11/03/2017

The “Fast Weather-forecast based 15 day Flow Forecast” developed by Safat Sikder of SASWE Group is now operationally online for Ganges, Brahmaputra and Mekong river basins. This numerically fast technique does not require dynamic downscaling of global weather forecasts from Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models such as GFS. It performs a statistical anomaly-adjustment based on historical forecasts to achieve the same level of forecast skill as using a NWP model like WRF for large river systems affected by seasonality. The savings in computational time of about 3-4 hours means that the flood forecasting agency can spend more time on disaster response and management. The Fast Weather-forecast based technique paper is available under Publications link (see Water Sustainability and Climate)

06/01/2017

Mekong nowcast of streamflow now driven by dynamically corrected (web-crawled in-situ precipitation) GPM IMERG precipitation.

05/15/2017

Nowcast altimeter height of virtual stations at transboundary location of Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers automated for Bangladesh Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC).

03/01/2017

Forecast functionality for crop water demand, precipitation and heat wave added for the Pakistan Irrigation Advisory using NOAA GFS data. This service is now being used by 10,000 farmers every week with great feedback on water conservation and yield improvement.

12/22/2016

South Asian Surface Water Monitoring System has now been expanded to Mekong River basin where hindcast and nowcast of stream flows along major locations of the Mekong river system can be visualized for SASWE Group’s Mekong stakeholders. The paper describing the Mekong hydrologic modeling system is now submitted to IEEE Magazine on Geosciences and Remote Sensing title “How well can Water Availability of the Mekong River Basin be represented by Physical Models and Satellite Observations?, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, (In review).” We expect to add a seasonal (NMME) forecast and a weekly (NWP) forecast of streamflow to the system early 2017.

12/01/2016

Transboundary Flow Monitoring for Mangla Dam launched for Pakistan Government. This system uses GPM IMERG and altimeter data to provide nowcast of the evolving transboundary flood situation for potential proactive reservoir operations downstream at Mangla. This is a system that was co-designed with matching support from Pakistan Council of Research for Water Resources (PCRWR) with voluntary (unfunded) service provided by SASWE Group. If the current system has skill in monitoring transboundary situation, Mangla Dam is expected to save the downstream region of damage to livestock and cropland. A forecast system may be added in future.

09/23/2016

Paper titled “A Scalable Open-source Web-analytic Framework to Improve Satellite -based Operational Water Management in Developing Countries” is now submitted to Journal of Environmental Modeling and Software. This paper documents the process of building an easy to use, easy to build web interface for connecting complex physical models in the backend to user through a front end interface. It also documents the effectiveness of web analytics and online correction systems for improving satellite based water management. The paper can be downloaded from http://saswe.net/publications/SASWMS.pdf

07/07/2016

Online streamflow correction system implemented for Ganges and Brahmaputra basins using in-situ flow measurements. Flow correction at each station is adjusted according to the upstream drainage area.

06/18/2016

Online precipitation correction system implemented for Pakistan using online precipitation gauge data from 49 stations.

06/08/2016

A real-time online web-crawler system is now implemented for correcting input data and model simulations on the fly. This webcrawler crawls numerous govt agency websites of the region to extract the latest in-situ data (last 24 hours) on precipitation and streamflow at specific locations. This in-situ information is then used for a real-time bias correction for satellite precipitation data and correction of discharge simulation in the entire region. The system accesses about a few dozen agency sites. Preliminary studies indicate that the operational skill of nowcast (daily) for precipitation and streamflow is significantly improved, particularly during situations when satellite precipitation quality is poor. More details on how the real-time correction system works based on web crawling will be available in a forthcoming publication by the SASWE group in Fall 2016 by first author and developer Nishan Kumar Biswas.