Some 80 people attended the event; download the complete Workshop Report

Water information systems are a key factor for improving water governance and to implement successfully Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) action plans. Today, in many African countries, policies and management decisions are based on sparse and unreliable information.

In 2000, the UN General Assembly included among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) a task to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. During the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the Heads of States and delegations called on all countries to develop Integrated Water and Resources Management (IWRM) and water efficiency strategies.

In response to WSSD, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the TIGER initiative in 2002, as a CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation satellites) contribution to assist African countries to overcome water-related problems and to bridge Africa's water information gap using satellite data.

TIGER has evolved thanks to the contributions of partners such as UNESCO (and its International Hydrological Programme), UN Africa-Water group (UN-Economic Commission for Africa), African and international institutions in the context of water resource management (e.g. African Ministerial Conference on Water), space agencies (e.g. Canadian Space Agency - CSA), development partners (e.g. African Development Bank) and other international and African organisations (e.g. CSIR of South Africa, Ramsar-Africa, African Departments of Water).

In order to review the status of the initiative and to prepare the basis for the next implementation period, more than 80 African water authorities, scientists and remote-sensing experts gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, from 20 to 25 November to attend the 3rd TIGER Workshop.

The workshop was organised with the objectives to:

• Review the main results of the TIGER research component and its projects.
• Review the preliminary results of the water information services development projects.
• Discuss the main strengths and challenges of the initiative so far.
• Prepare the basis for the next implementation period set to begin in 2008.

Figure 1 TIGER Workshop 2006, November 2006

The workshop was complemented with dedicated training sessions:

1. A four day Training session on Advanced Optical Remote Sensing dedicated to ESA Principal Investigators (22-25 October).
2. A four day Training session on Optical Remote Sensing organised by UNESCO (22-25 October).

Figure 2 Advanced Optical Remote Sensing Training, November 2006