The main objective is to enhance the capacity of DWIR staff in using innovative data and tools to analyze water resources and support water management. The training is organized with a very practical approach and strongly built upon the ‘learning-by-doing’ principles. Participants use freely accessible satellite-derived data to gain insight in and knowledge of the hydrological system and surface water bodies. The training allows DWIR to embed Google Earth Engine in their decision-making processes. Unique about this training is the focus on DWIR regional-level offices, which have limited capacity in working with these data and tools.
The Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems (DWIR) is one of the key government agencies in the field of integrated water resources management in Myanmar. DWIR consists, next to its national head offices, of twelve regional offices. Regional DWIR offices concentrate on flood protection by maintenance of the river and its embankments.
National-level DWIR staff attended previous trainings on Google Earth Engine (GEE) organized by FutureWater and HKV in Myanmar, during which GEE was identified as a particularly relevant tool to support DWIR’s mission. FutureWater and HKV have also successfully collaborated in a Partners for Water project focusing on operational rainfall monitoring. In particular, regional-level DWIR staff can benefit from using GEE for successfully complying with their mandate concerning design and practical implementation of riverbank and flood protection measures. They need to work with geospatial data on historical river morphology, flood extent, as well as hydrological baseline data on e.g. rainfall and evapotranspiration. With the overall capacity of the regional-level staff somewhat lower than the national level staff, this TMT aims to achieve a great leap forward by acquainting regional staff with geodata access, analyses and interpretation using GEE, to benefit the quality of flood protection measures and overall water safety in Myanmar.
The training is implemented by a mix of Dutch and Burmese trainers, who provide a program consisting of a month on-distance support, a two-and-a-halve-week in-country training followed by a period of 6 months of regular on-distance support. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, in-country training components are converted to an eLearning approach.
