GIWEH’s team took an active participation in Korea International Water Week (KIWW) (19-22 October, 2016) during the thematic session 8 “Water Information Beyond Data And Knowledge: Asia Dynamic Hub For Water, The Power Of Information” on Thursday, 20 October. This session highlighted the project of Asia Dynamic Hub for Water, a dynamic database developed to answer the challenges faced by developing countries in Asia to access data on both the policy and technical level. The data is key to predicting and tackling water-related problems and to disaster recovery. The database will provide knowledge on water resources and will aim to reduce the information gap on water-related issues. It will use free open-source software to provide useful information in digital or paper form on for all Asian member states to improve decision-making and policy implementation in water resources management.

During this session, Ms. Marguerite Lançon presented GIWEH’s project proposal “Promoting water sustainability in Asia through sciences, knowledge base and education for the achievement of water-related SDG targets”. Under Asia Water Council’s the Special Committee “Knowledge Base and Dissemination”, GIWEH, as a vice chair, introduced the project co-developed with UNESCO-IHP. The project’s objective is to create a knowledge base in Asia and to promote knowledge dissemination through education, capacity building and scientific cooperation for the achievement of water-related Sustainable Development Goals targets in the region. The presentation was followed by insightful presentations on existing databases in Asia and data monitoring solutions at the national level in different countries.

The panel discussion brought together water experts from academia, ministries and international organizations in Asia to discuss solutions to overcome the information gap and data challenges. Dr. Nidal Salim highlighted the need to identify what time of data is available, what data need to be collected and how to collect it. Panelists and participants agreed to pursue and strengthen collaboration as well as to start sharing data, knowledge and information available in their home countries in order to start building Asia Dynamic Hub.