IUKWC progress report: Year 2

India-UK Water Centre. 2018 IUKWC progress report: Year 2. Wallingford and Pune, NERC/Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, 26pp. (UKCEH Project no. C05962)

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Abstract/Summary

The second year of the virtual India-UK Water Centre (IUKWC) has seen improved stability at the operational front and growth with respect to engagement of scientific and stakeholder communities in both the countries. We are happy to report that sustained growth in membership of the Centre's Open Network of India-UK Water Scientists shows that the IUKWC has, through its various activities and online tools, almost doubled its engagement with individual scientists since the end of year one. The members include representatives from key scientific institutions from both the countries along with stakeholders from NGOs, State & local government water managers. The increased reach achieved over year two is helping the Centre to establish a widespread network of collaborations between India and the UK, which will hopefully ensure long-term sustainable links in water security research. The Centre has been functioning smoothly on its co–delivery model with a joint Secretariat based in the UK at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and in India, at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. The Secretariat continues to comprise a team of experienced project managers, stakeholder engagement experts, administrators and web developers. While year two has seen changes in a few team members, the transition has been managed to ensure the planning and execution of Centre activities remains unaffected. IUKWC has successfully hosted one science workshop, a User Engagement Initiative (UEI), a Pump Priming Project and 3 Research Exchanges over year two, in addition to concluding a number of activities commenced in the first year. The technical focus of these events included: Integrating precipitation forecasts and climate predictions with basin-scale hydrological modelling; Linking and predicting heat waves with droughts; Monitoring range of antibiotics in rivers; and Integrating remotely sensed observations of surface water storage with climate forecast. Centre activities continued to receive highly positive feedback with respect to issues addressed, technologies presented, discussions held, engagement mechanisms and of course execution. The Centre's inaugural UEI was held in January 2018 in Kochi and focused on Improving freshwater monitoring frameworks and data for research and management. The event, which aimed to disseminate the outputs of recent joint India-UK water science, witnessed active participation from stakeholders as well as scientists. The stakeholders included state level water managers in the pollution, biodiversity, supply and irrigation sectors from five states: Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The event outcomes highlighted the specific scientific barriers, the current priority needs of stakeholders and the expertise/technology available within India and UK science community. The event saw extensive coverage by the local media. Implementation of the Centre's new Grassroots Field Exposure Sessions (GRFS) initiative experienced delays due to the availability of participants but, the first two events are to be implemented before the end of 2018 in West Bengal, focusing on managing & monitoring agriculture water demand and water quality. The GFES initiative was launched after discussions at the previous IUKWC Steering Group meeting and is planned to take the form of multi-day events designed to expose scientists to issues faced by water stakeholders at the ground level so as to encourage co-design of future research projects. The Centre and its activities continue to be facilitated by an online web platform, which also hosts the Open Network of India - UK Scientists. The website has now been fully translated to Hindi in order to reach a wider audience in India and the Centre’s publications are also translated to Hindi to assist the above goal. A new website service to disseminate the latest opportunities and news from the India–UK water community has been introduced in order to make the website a water hub for its members. Efforts are also being made to encourage the use of the online discussion portal and webinar tools by Centre members. The Centre continues to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to spread news regarding its activities and to increase engagement amongst the scientific community. The years’ one and two have been two very engaging and successful founding years for IUKWC and we would like to thank the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Natural Environment Research Council for their continued support to the Centre. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the hundreds of water scientists and stakeholders from across India and the UK who have responded enthusiastically to our activities and engaged in the IUKWC over the last 24 months. The positive feedback received from our members is overwhelming. We hope to continue to engage existing members and increase the reach of our activities to new audiences from across the India-UK water security science sector. In doing so we will ensure the Centre continues to facilitate an increased impact and sustainable legacy for bilateral water science between the two countries.

Item Type:	Publication - Report
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Water Resources (Science Area 2017-)
Funders/Sponsors:	NERC, Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), India
Additional Keywords:	India-UK Water Centre
NORA Subject Terms:	Hydrology
Related URLs:	Project Website
Date made live:	19 Jan 2021 13:25 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/529421

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