Water Control Room for South Africa

South Africa suffers from water stress. To efficiently manage the available water resources and reduce climate- and weather-related impacts, water managers need access to historical, current and forecast water and weather information. HydroNET is a web-based decision-support system that provides intelligent solutions for operational and strategic water management. It combines weather information from the South African Weather Service (SAWS) with water information from the DWS and adds models and local knowledge to generate personalised overviews, forecasts and warnings. This added-value information is available via dashboards and reports and empowers water managers to make well-informed decisions.

HydroNET Solution

In 2013, SAWS, HydroLogic, eLEAF, the Dutch water authorities and the Inkomati-Usuthu Catchment Management Agency (IUCMA) launched a pilot to demonstrate the benefits of the HydroNET Water Control Room for South Africa. Since then HydroNET has been successfully rolled out to all nine Water Management Areas. To achieve this over 40 local data sets are connected and many dashboards and reports are configured tailored to the needs of South African water managers. Since the launch in 2020, over 150 South African water managers are trained to optimally benefit from the information on weather, irrigated water use, water availability, water quality and other relevant data.

HydroNET training of South African water managers