The selection process for the Second WMO HydroHub Innovation Call has just concluded. We are happy to announce that three companies have been offered contracts to implement projects in the next six months.
The selected companies are:
Elligence Solucoes em Tecnologia will be implementing a project in Belize.
The project proposes the development of a module for Belize NMHS Climate Data Management System (CDMS) for performing automatic Quality Control (QC) of rainfall and water level measurements based on Artificial Intelligence. In the last two years, Elligence Solucoes em Tecnologia has developed a modern web-based CDMS called "Surface" for Belize NMS that performs ingestion of data from manual and automatic stations. Belize has 47 automatic stations from different manufacturers collecting data every 5 or 15 minutes. "Surface" has a real-time Quality Control module using standard tests (range, persistence, and step) and flags (good, bad, suspect, inconsistent) based on the Oklahoma Mesonet network QC system.
The project will develop a new module to run automated QC tests based on machine learning algorithms that would allow the full automation of the CDMS QC subsystem based on unsupervised classification methods and on learning patterns from manually flagged measurements by the NMS operators. Such a module will improve the reliability of measurements of hydrometeorological data and build trust in new sources of information that Belize NMS is starting to provide to external stakeholders.
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee will be implementing a project in the Himalayan region.
The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) with its rugged landscape and rivers characterized by extreme variability in discharge, sediment load and turbidity, makes traditional observational hydrology difficult, time-consuming and life-threatening, and traditional non-contact technologies unreliable. Among the available non-contact water level observation technologies, lidar-based systems are promising because of their capability to reliably measure water levels in highly turbid river systems under various angles, while being cost-effective and energy-efficient.
The project proposes to install an innovative lidar platform with telemetry to measure river water level in the IHR. A bespoke, user-friendly GUI will be designed for the NMHS to view the field data and run QA/QC workflows on the field data. The proposed technology will improve the capacity of the NMHS in non-contact hydrometry and enable the NMHS in the expansion of the hydrometric observation network in rugged and hard to access topography.
Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) will be implementing a project in Tanzania.
The project will establish an open-source platform-independent hardware and software workflow to establish new operational river monitoring sites through image velocimetry methods, based on simple camera hardware. This technology so far is only available within a limited number of commercial firms with proprietary solutions and thus not accessible in low-income countries.
The project will facilitate that new sites can be established both in high-income and low-income countries, with conventional and easily accessible camera hardware, and without any specific requirement for processing hardware (web-based). Developments in this project focus on the software for derivation and maintenance of rating curves and API connections. The project will be implemented through co-design with users, development and testing at locations in Tanzania and The Netherlands, and through training with local users. The proposed solution is easily scalable.