IDL Helps Ethiopia Manage Their Water Resources

NV5 (formerly Exelis VIS) recently renewed user licenses for its scientific programming language, IDL, that were donated in June of 2011, to a USAID project aimed at helping Ethiopia tackle the daunting task of developing and managing their water resources. The program is administered by the Ethiopian Institute of Water Resources (EIWR), an organization set up to coordinate research, education and outreach activities among partnering U.S. and Ethiopian universities.

Currently, EIWR's Academic Consortium consists of over 50 faculty from two U.S. universities (the University of Connecticut and Alabama A&M University), and five Ethiopian universities that are working together to transform the way Ethiopia understands and plans for sustainable water resource management. According to Tena Alamirew Agumassie, Ph.D., Director of EIWR, the IDL licenses donated by NV5 are currently being used by students and faculty for: teaching and learning computer programming; solving assignments in probabilistic methods in hydro sciences, and remote sensing applications; researching data analysis using GRACE and TRIM satellite data reading, analysis and mapping; and modeling hydrology systems.

Almost all major development problems in Ethiopia are water-related, though water scarcity is not the issue. Rather, it is a lack of institutional capacity and workforce expertise in the area of sustainable water resource management that is at the root of the problem. There is actually an estimated 122 billion cumecs of surface water in nine river basins across the country. Yet, Ethiopia has one of Africa's lowest rates of access to water supply and sanitation with half the population walking up to four kilometers every day to fetch water. Major health problems in Ethiopia are directly traceable to rainfall and the water cycle, but public health concerns are only one reason Ethiopia is looking to develop and manage their exiting water resources in a sustainable manner. Other pressing concerns that will be eased or remedied with sustainable management of water in Ethiopia include; food insecurity, recurrent droughts and disastrous floods, low economic development, and low energy production.

NV5 is a leading geospatial software company with a history of helping individuals, organizations, and governments study the environment and natural resources. The company creates a variety of off-the-shelf and custom image analysis and data visualization software solutions which are easy to use, scientifically accurate, and that integrate with existing platforms like ArcGIS® from Esri. So whether you are looking to manage water resources like the EIWR, discover mineral deposits using hyperspectral imagery, predict future climate conditions based upon historic numerical data, or anything in between, NV5 has the software solution you need to make better, more informed decisions.