Expertise: Water Productivity, Agricultural Water Management , Remote Sensing, Irrigation Performance Assessment
Expertise Group: Agriculture/Rural Development
Consultant Source: International
TOR Keywords: Water Productivity, Agricultural Water Management , Remote Sensing, Irrigation Performance Assessment
Objective and Purpose of the Assignment
The objective of the assignment is to develop assessment of Remote Sensing based Water Productivity (WP)
analysis for specified command areas in the sub-basins of Karnataka through the ACIWRM’s Technical group
on Water Productivity, to monitor hydrological and meteorological conditions of the State by developing
a digital web-based report generator for all the watersheds.
Scope of Work
The consultant will also support the ACIWRM Technical group on Water Productivity to streamline the
preparation of Water Productivity reports for irrigation schemes in Karnataka. The focus will be on
KISWRIMP programme in the consultancy with a target on facilitating the entire workflow to be driven by
the ACIWRM Technical team and implemented inhouse at ACIWRM. The consultant will hold short trainings
for the partners addressing different processing workflows of WP assessment to enable further reporting
in the future.
The consultant will support the ACIWRM’s Land and Water Management expert and the Water Resources
specialist for providing the WP data integration in Karnataka Water Resource Information System (KWRIS)
and hydrology inputs for the KISWRMIP River Basin profiles and planning. The consultant’s role will
principally involve in developing a report generator which will is foreseen to be an integral part of
the KWRIS. The Watershed Report Generator for Karnataka (WRGK) will be developed as a web-based
application where all the stakeholders of State Government Departments will have access to generate
detailed report on the Water balance, environment and climatic conditions of the watersheds. The WRGK
will be developed based on existing RS based data sets and can develop dynamic reports which explains
spatial and temporal characteristics of water balance components, water productivity, water scarcity and
climate. The consultant will integrate the tool into the existing set of digital tools in the framework
of KWRIS but with an independent user management system and database.
Detailed Tasks and/or Expected Output
Under the supervision of the Director, (Technical) ACIWRM and Chief Technical Advisor, the incumbent
will support the national hydrologist, specialist staff, ACIWRM Technical team, National consultants,
partners and international consultants by assisting and advising on:
- Technical advice on handling RS and GIS data for the WP assessments, support developing scripts for
automating the data acquisition, key variable generation for WP computation and analysing the results. - Preparation of terms of reference for the procurement of services including training and capacity
development. Carry out face to face and online short trainings on various aspects of WP assessment using
RS data - Need assessment to agree on key functionalities of the automatic report generator, mains sources of
input data, results/outputs (e.g. plots, graphs), and any other identified functionalities. - Design the WRGK report generator based on the agreed requirements and functionalities. The report
generator will be developed as a three-tier system with the following components: i) User
interface/inputs; ii) Backend engine and iii) the Output report structure. A potential architecture of
the WRGK is given in the annex. - Code and test automation of input data sources and the outputs/results generation. This activity
shall also encompass the integration of the report generation into an existing UI or one will be created
specifically in this case. This will be determined in close coordination with the ACIWRM team, which
will also ensure any required source coding combability to link and operate within the existing
API/Server. The specifics will be facilitated and provided during the development process. - Migration of the developed tool to the server where KWRIS is hosted
- Support and maintenance. Deliver quality control and technical support to the Team, following first
roll-out of the report generator to incorporate any updates and changes following feedback from
potential users/applications testing the tool. - Synthetize any basic required tool maintenance, data updating and troubleshooting to ensure
operability of the tool upon completion of its development.
Minimum Qualification Requirements
- Masters and PhD in Remote sensing for Agriculture and Water applications, natural sciences,
Geoinformatics and Photogrammetry. - At least 15 years practical experience in Data analytics from remotely sensed data, Data driven
digital products for water and agriculture, Cloud computing, Server/client architecture, ICT for
development, Dashboards, Agricultural water management, Water productivity Assessment, Irrigation
performance assessment. - Extensive knowledge in automating the data processing workflows, developing server-based scripting
pipelines, Experience in web technologies, server-client architecture, Content Management systems, Web
GIS using open source tools - Strong programming skills in python, bash and R. Experience with open source RS and GIS tools like
GRASS GIS, Geoserver, GeoDjango, PySEBAL, QGIS etc. hydrological data processing, databases and data
management systems. Experience in capacity building of staff - Strong analytical and report writing skills are required. Strong communication, interpersonal skills,
MS Office proficiency, presentation techniques with experience Excellent English skills. Experience in
developing countries and India is desirable.
Minimum General Experience: 15 Years
Minimum Specific Experience (relevant to assignment): 10 Years
