Water information system

• Water database at the national/state/city/ village level and macro/micro watershed level • Standardised national information system with data bank networks • Report data for all water bodies type (lakes, reservoirs, rivers, groundwater, etc.) on water availability, water use, future projections of water demand water for diverse purposes

• • Water Resource management (WRM) • Integrating and strengthening the existing Central and State level agencies • Improving the data quality and the processing capabilities • Promoting free exchange of reliable data among various agencies

• Standards for coding, classification, data processing and methods/procedures for its collection should be adopted • Modern information system developed with advances in IT • Technological upgradation for continuous collection, process and dissemination of data

• Data collection requires extensive field survey and use of technically advanced tools like GIS and Remotes sensing • Financial burden to the stakeholders • Frequency of data available is limited

• GoI has done a lot of work and launched many combined and separate portals for groundwater and surface water resources • Main portals are: http://www.india-water.com/ http://www.india-wris.nrsc.gov.in/; http://nih.ernet.in/rbis/rbis.htm • Others include web portals by CGWB, CPCB, ISRO, etc. • Lacks consistency and continuity in terms of different regions, water body types and time period • Data is treated highly confidential due to interstate and inter-basins disputes • Actual stream flow data for the major rivers and their tributaries are non-existent and collecting reliable data is an expensive affair • Rainfall data is available but there have been no systematic attempts at estimating the amount of run off over various types of topographical features

[Contributor: Deepshikha Sharma, PhD Scholar, TERI University, New Delhi, India]