Ministry of Water and IrrigationJordan

World Meteorological Organization

Blue Peace- Water Security in the Middle East

Project Coordination Meeting

Current Status of Hydrological and

Meteorological Information Systems in Jordan

Secretary General Assistant of Technical Affairs

Ministry of Water and Irrigation,

Eng. Ali Subah

24-26 January 2013Geneve, Switzerland

Jordan among the 4 most water-scarce

countries in the world

demand outstrips supply by

200%

annual per capita water availability of 120 – 145 m3

Direction of Groundwater

movementSahran

Jafr

DISI & Mudawarra

Southern Wadi Araba

Nort

hern

W

adi A

raba

Dead Sea

Jord

an V

alle

y

Amman-Zarqa

Yarmouk

Jordan Side Valley

Azraq

Hammad

Challenges

• Population growth (2.5%/year) and large refugee influxes.

• Rising water needs for expanding economic sectors, such as industry and tourism.

• High rate of non-revenue-water at around 40%.

• Limited funding and private sector participation.

• Coordination with neighboring countries of shared water resources.

• Cooperation and Coordination between the Water related Agencies

• Limited energy sources and high dependency on foreign sources (96% of energy comes from imported oil and gas ).

• Climate change predictions: 20-25% decrease and strong variability of rainfall; temperature rise of 2ºC

• Long distances between areas of high consumption and of abstraction -> high transportation costs.

Water consumption

• Jordan is heavily dependent on groundwater resources (over 50% of supply).

• 10 out of the 12 groundwater basins are over-exploited.

• Agriculture is the largest water consumer with 56% of the water use in Jordan in 2011.

 

• Hydro-meteorological data is essential for planning, design and implementation of all water related activities (improved resilience in case of extreme weather events)

• Continuous hydro-meteorological measurements of good quality are necessary for climate records in the long term

• “the existing climatic and water resources monitoring in the country is facing permanent problems in operation, slow modernization of equipment and reducing of the monitoring network”

Second National Communication of Jordan to the UNFCCC, 2009

Background

Background

DataData InformationInformation KnowledgeKnowledge DecisionsDecisions

• giz has been approached by MWI 2009 on helping to develop a concept for an implementation of a National Water Resources Observation Programme (NaWaROP).

• As an important base element for future water sector management, MWI has decided to include a modern Telemetric Water Resources Observation Network facilitating sound data acquisition (TeWaRON)

TeWaRON and NaWaROP

Basic characteristics of information aggregation to be achieved by NaWaROP

Raw data

Processed data

Reports

Decision Maker

Sensor

Server

Expert

Level

of

Information

Source of informationInformation product

TeWaRON and NaWaROP

• Telemetric monitoring for

• Surface water

• Ground water

• Meteorological stations

TeWaRON

Current situation

• how many stations of which type (ground water, meteorology, discharge) exist?

21.04.23

21.04.23

TeWaRON: what has been achieved since 2009?

Current situation

Current situation

• How is information communicated and shared?

What are others doing?

• RSS EMARCU

• Meteorological

Department

What are others doing?

• RSS EMARCU

• Meteorological

Department

Cooperation is the Key!

Next Steps• Measurement stations:

– Enlargement of the hydro-meteorological measurement system through the erection of new measurement stations

– Extension of existing measurement stations with a telemetric component

– Improvement of the hydro-meteorological measurement system through the measurement of water quality parameters (possibly also at production wells of the Water Authority of Jordan WAJ)

– Rehabilitation of existing measurement stations– Improvement of the measurement system of the

Jordan Valley Authority JVA

21.04.23

Next Steps• Computer-based data system

– Improvement / new setup of the central database (Water Information System WIS)

– Optimised interfaces between the WIS and other water-related information systems

– Improvement of the system to control the quality of the measured data

– Improvement of the possibility to analyse the data and to provide these data and analysis to the decision level and interested public (e. g. via internet)

• Training of the staff

21.04.23