The CHy e-Board is a virtual space where the CHy community posts announcements of interest.
Appropriate posts for the CHy e-Board will include communications from the President, documents for discussion, announcements of forthcoming meetings etc, related to the work of the Commission for Hydrology.
Whenever a particular document so requires, a discussion on “CHy Forum” will be undertaken.
All announcements are classified in categories, please select a category below to display the corresponding announcements (in brackets you will find the number of announcements posted under each category)
May 18th, 2010
The increase awareness of the planet as an integrated system and the vulnerability of human society to extreme weather (as well as to climate changes) are the driving factors that turn WIGOS into an important tool for advising policy and decision makers. By providing an instrument for integrating surface and space based components, WIGOS aims at enabling the integration of WMO observing systems and enhancing the interaction between WMO partner organizations. WIGOS aims at improving access to real-time and non-real-time observations, as well as quality, consistency and traceability of observations, leading to the improvement of products and services. One of its main guidelines are standardization of instruments and methods of observations, WIS information infrastructure, and end-product quality assurance. The present stage of WIGOS deals with its development and implementation; only then will an operational phase take place in which it is expected to become an ongoing programme for decades to come.
The WIGOS pilot project supervised by the CHy is the Integration of Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS) and the Hydrological Cycle Observing System of the Southern Africa Developing Community (SADC-HYCOS).
WMO and USAID/OFDA in collaboration with NOAA are assessing the capacity in flood forecasting and early warning in the Zambezi river basin, aiming at a strategic plan to circumvent the serious consequences of frequent floodings in the region. Such annual disasters may be thought of as being partially due to the lack of an integrated Flood Forecasting and Early Warning (FFEW) System in the basin. WMO activities in the area include the Flood Forecasting Initiative, the Southern Africa component of the Regional Flash Flood Forecasting Guidance System (SARFFGS), and the SADC-HYCOS, among others. This project forms an integral part of the WMO Flash Flood Initiative (FFI).
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Posted in WIGOS and WIS | Add a Comment »
April 9th, 2010
The 2010 meeting of the presidents of technical commissions (PTC) was held in the WMO Headquarters in Geneva in January 2010. The meeting focused on a number of key issues related to the Hydrology and Water Resources Programme.
WMO Strategic Planning
The PTC noted the request of the Fifteenth World Meteorological Congress (Cg-XV) that the technical commissions adhere to the direction and priorities set forth in the Strategic Plan and organize their programme structures and activities so as to pursue the top-level objectives and to achieve the expected results (ER) of the organization.
The PTC agreed to develop their Operating Plan (OP) for 2012–2015 based on the experiences gained through the development of the Operating Plan for the fifteenth financial period. They noted that EC-LX and EC-LXI had endorsed the guiding principles and schedule for delivering the draft WMO SP and OP for the period 2012-2015.
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Posted in Communication from the president | Add a Comment »
March 1st, 2010
During CHy-XIII, the Commission adopted Resolution 2 on this Project. It also adopted the governance scheme comprising:
- a Steering Committee of the project, assumed by the Advisory Working Group (AWG), to provide overall guidance; and
- a Management Committee (MC) for day-to-day implementation. As tasked by the Commission, the AWG finalized at its first meeting the Terms of Reference of the MC.
The Secretariat then undertook the actions necessary to establish the MC. I was honoured to be asked to Chair the MC, which I have accepted, and I am pleased to report on the MC’s inaugural meeting held in Geneva November 18-19, 2009 and progress made to date on this Project. You may access the report of this meeting at the Project website (http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/hwrp/FlowMeasurement.html).
The meeting examined those activities currently under implementation, considered requests from CHy-XIII and its Advisory Working Group on expanding the scope of the Project, and focused on taking decisions about future activities. This resulted in having two new Project Outputs added to the originally identified five, with the work plan being modified accordingly. The updated work plan is contained in the report of the meeting and the most recently updated version can be accessed on the project website: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/hwrp/Flow/flow_tech/workplan.php. Discussions and decisions by the MC at its first meeting, as well as an update on activities, will now be provided using the Project Outputs as a reporting template.
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Posted in QMF-Hydrology | Add a Comment »
February 19th, 2010
As previously announced by Ann Calver (see her message dated 4 January 2010 below) WMO, together with CIIFEN (Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno de El Niño), organized a workshop in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on the ‘Integration of Seasonal Forecasts and Hydrological Information for Water-related Sectors in the Western Coast of South America’ from 25-28 January 2010. Roddy Henderson, from NIWA (New Zealand) attended this workshop in representation of CHy. Extracts from his report are reproduced below:
Introductory Sessions
General introductory material from Dr Caponi, Dr Mascarenhas, Dra. Borbor and Ing. Gallardo set the scene for the workshop. With the sponsorship of WMO and CHy, we were to discuss the current situation and then formulate an action plan for the implementation of regional hydrologic forecasts. Potential problems of data availability were foreshadowed at this early stage; this reflected both funding issues (closure of stations) and ownership issues (access to data in real time and historically because of ownership by private companies rather than national services). However the great importance of data for policy formulation, decision making and application of models for forecasting was stressed.
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Posted in Hydrological Forecasting and Prediction, Water, Climate and Risk Management | Add a Comment »
February 1st, 2010
In conjunction with our terms of reference as co-leads of the CHy theme area on QMF-Hydrology, we attended a WMO Quality Management Framework Overview and Auditor Training Workshop in Geneva during the week of December 7-11, 2009. As you may recall, the Executive Council decided during its fifty-sixth session (EC-LVI, June 2004) to establish an Inter-Commission Task Team on Quality Management Framework (ICTT-QMF). The Council agreed that the WMO Quality Management Framework should focus on technical aspects of the operation of the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs). It also emphasized the role and responsibility of the technical commissions in the provision of guidance, advice, review, and assessment for the development of the WMO QMF. In order to facilitate the implementation of a QMF in Members NMHSs, the ICTT-QMF deemed it essential to provide initial training for the Member’s experts active in QM issues in the various technical commissions as well as the WMO Secretariat staff supporting them. The subject overview and training workshop was a first attempt at meeting this objective.
The workshop consisted of two components: an overview of the fundamental regulations associated with the ISO 9000 family of Quality Management Standards; and an intensive introduction to the essential elements of planning and conducting an internal QMS audit. Although most of the workshop was devoted to auditor training, we would like to provide a more general review of the concepts and principles of Quality Management in this e-Board posting.
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Posted in QMF-Hydrology | Add a Comment »