Works management assistance for the hydrological monitoring of the Congo Basin

At COP 21 in December 2015 in Paris, a financing agreement was signed between the French Development Agency (FDA-AFD) and the International Commission of the Congo-Oubangui-Sangha Basin (CICOS). At that point, the IOWater has been entrusted with the duty of assisting the project owner, including the provision of a resident expert.

This project aims at strengthening the implementation of IWRM at the CICOS and more particularly improving the monitoring of water resources in the Congo Basin, by combining the traditional "in situ" approach with the innovative use of spatial altimetry (in anticipation of the launch of the Franco-American SWOT satellite in 2021). More specifically, it is a matter of:

• Building CICOS' capacities to better perform the operational hydrological monitoring function (enhancing the procurement, restitution and operational use of hydrological data processes for forecasting, modelling and integrated water resources management).
• Strengthening the institutions and populations’ capacities to adapt to climate change by contributing to the creation of services for hydrometeorological data user platforms, for example for: low water level forecasting (for navigation), flood forecasting, hydropower management... )

• Integrating an innovation that uses Earth observation satellites for hydrological monitoring, the first of its kind in the world