GEO - Global Water Sustainability

Established in 2017 by the Group on Earth Observations - Water Community, GEOGloWS is a voluntary mechanism created by informal agreement among multiple partners from inside and outside the UN system. This mechanism allows for engagement and greater integration with trans-national organizations and agencies with water responsibilities at the National and Local levels.  

The GEOGloWS mission is to pioneer scientific and global collaboration to provide relevant, actionable water information and promote the use of earth observations in the decision-making process while promoting the strengthening of observational networks.  GEOGloWS promotes the GEO Data Sharing Principles and Data Management for broad, open data policies and the realization of the right to access information in the public domain and applied to decision-making.  

One of the main efforts within the GEOGloWS Initiative is to provide water information at a reasonable scale for most of the world. The GEOGloWS-ECMWF Streamflow Service (GESS) is an Analysis Ready Data (ARD) system that uses a Hydrologic Modeling as a Service (HMaaS) approach. This ARD centralizes the cyberinfrastructure, human expertise, and other components of hydrologic modeling using the global forecasts and expertise available, along with the latest advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The GESS delivers reliable streamflow forecast information as a service worldwide, spares users from the resource-consuming tasks necessary to gather, analyze, and process all the underlying data that must otherwise be synthesized and computed locally to generate similar results.  The GESS allows local stakeholders to solve water management problems such as flooding, drought, and water/food security issues by providing the water intelligence they need to develop custom applications and make decisions. This interaction of global expertise and local knowledge provides a unique and complementary framework that helps develop capacity and empowers local users as more in-depth analyses are possible for better decision-making. From the human and social view, the GEOGloWS-ECMWF service promotes Data Democracy and provides equality regardless of country development; every country, organization, and citizen has access to the same information.