WISDOM: Knowledge à la carte
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The Mekong is of the world’s largest rivers. Its delta extends across 40,000 square kilometres in South West Vietnam. Tourists experience the Mekong Delta as a fruitful region through which uncountable waterways flow and on which the people in their boats engage in everyday life and business. The markets overflow with tropical fruits, three rice harvests per year and aquacultures for prawn and pangasius secure a modest level of prosperity. However, this idyll is threatened. Strong floods are experienced each year. The mangroves are disappearing. Biological diversity is declining quickly. And the soils are salinating and drinking water is in ever shorter supply.
The information system WISDOM (Water-related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta Vietnam) aims to enable the Vietnamese authorities to gain a better overview so that they can develop sustainable solutions for managing the short availability and supply of resources. Dr. Claudia Künzer from the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is coordinating the major project in which 60 scientists and researchers and 15 doctoral students from 18 German and Vietnamese research centres and universities are working together.
The reasons for the increasing problems are complex. The population is growing, but climate change, too, as well as dam building in neighbouring countries, all play a role in this development. Time series at the Helmholtz Centre GFZ taken over the past 70 years show that extreme events such as particularly extensive floods and strong droughts are following each other in ever quicker succession. And because the delta has land heights of just a few metres above sea level, a small increase in the sea level already has a clear effect. The inflowing saltwater leads to the salination of the soil, the more intensive farming pollutes the water with residual pesticides and fertilisers. “Our goal is to create a user friendly information system in Vietnamese that not only benefits the authorities in the capital, but also the decision-makers in the delta provinces, without requiring any special training,” says Künzer. “For example, we explain this by taking the example of a restaurant. The ingredients are delivered in the cellar, i.e. the data, which are fed into the databases. The kitchen is on the ground floor, where the raw data are turned into maps and statistics through hidden database queries and algorithms to create added value.
On the first floor, the guest gets the menu à la carte, namely the information that was ordered.” For example, what areas in a specific region are particularly strongly affected by flooding? How densely populated are these areas, and what is grown there? Behind all this lies the knowledge of ten different subjects, ranging from hydrology via sociology through to remote sensing with satellites, Künzer’s own special field. The scientists measure water levels and water quality, record how the land is used and ask locally about education levels, lifestyles and living conditions. “All the doctoral students and many scientists are working in the delta to carry out measuring campaigns and to ask the people, for example, whether they collect rainwater or how they purify their drinking water,” reports Künzer. These surveys are jointly carried out by German and Vietnamese doctoral students.
An important data basis is provided by Earth observation satellites, such as the radar satellite TerraSAR-X, which is managed by the DLR. TerraSAR-X records the extent of the flooding, the settlement density and the road network. Further data are then added from satellites such as MODIS, LANDSAT, SPOT, Quickbird, ALOS and ENVISAT. GFZ scientists have created a new network of sensors that transmit information on the local water level plus sediment and salt content to a field station. This is then complemented by the results of local, on-site studies that are also entered into the databases. “The project also improves the collaboration between the Vietnamese decisionmakers and stakeholders who previously did not know about each other. Many only realise through our workshops how important it is not to keep the information to oneself, but rather to share it,” says Künzer.
For the end users, the System currently still in a prototype stage will one day be as intuitive to us as Google Earth. Simple mouse clicks enable the overlay of various kinds of information like maps, satellite images, statistics, reports and photos – knowledge à la carte. In a possible follow-up phase (2010 to 2013) the WISDOM Information System will be led to maturity and finally transferred to the Vietnamese partners. Other countries are showing a strong interest in the technology, which can be transferred easily.
