An information system for integrated land and water resources management in the Kara River basin (Togo and Benin)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a web-based information system designed to support integrated land and water resources management in the Kara River basin, addressing data sharing and collaboration challenges in West Africa.

Contribution

It presents the development of OtiRBIS, a comprehensive data management platform tailored for transboundary river basin assessment and management in West Africa.

Findings

Enhanced data sharing among stakeholders

Facilitated watershed-based assessment and planning

Supported transboundary water resources management

Abstract

A prerequisite for integrated land and water resources management (ILWRM) is a holistic river basin assessment. The latter requires information and data from different scientific disciplines but also appropriate data management systems to store and manage historical and real time data, set up protocols that facilitate data and information access and sharing among different stakeholders, and triggering further collaboration among different institutions in support of watershed-based assessment, management and planning. In West Africa in general and especially in the transboundary Volta River basin where different environmental data are collected and managed by different agencies in different countries and also where data access and dissemination are very challenging and difficult tasks, comprehensive river basin information systems are required. This paper presents the Oti River Basin Information System (OtiRBIS), a web-based data storage, management andanalysis platform that addresses these needs and facilitates ILWRM implementation in the Kara river basin.