Hydro Agro Informatics

The Government of Sindh (GoS) has launched the Sindh Water and Agricultural Transformation (SWAT) Project in January 2023, with financial of World Bank World Bank. The Project Development Objective (PDO) is to increase agricultural water productivity in Selected Farmers’ Organization command areas, improve integrated water resources management, and contribute to restoring crop production by small and medium‐sized farmers affected by the 2022 floods.

SWAT Project comprises of six components, which are to be implemented during six years’ time. The Component 1 of the project titled as Water Resources Management will help establish a provincial water resources management system through the following subcomponents: (i)  Hydro-Agro Informatics (HAI) program; (ii) the development of a Sindh Strategic Water Plan (SWP) and supporting studies; and (iii) the formulation of new water law and the restructuring of the Irrigation Department into the Irrigation and Water Resources Department.

The Sindh Irrigation Management Strategy (2016) and Sindh Water Policy (2023) has broadly discussed and given clear strategic directions that, the Province should have Natural Resources Management, based on information and we should build our knowledge base through latest interventions used successfully in the world. The insufficient information is hampering the ability of Province to manage its water resources, tackle environmental issues, and support agricultural growth. The HAI program is conceived under SWAT project to help Sindh build the foundation needed for filling this information gap through the application of new tools for monitoring both water and agriculture. This integrated approach will help in modernizing water and agricultural management where decisions across the scales are informed by continuous, reliable, and accessible data.

Hydro Agro Informatics (HAI) program is planned to be a New Generation of Decision Support Irrigation, Agriculture and other water related institutions with services to support Climate Resilient and Efficient Water, Agriculture & over all Irrigation Management. HAI program will use a combination of remote sensing and ground-based observations related to water and agriculture parameters to provide information on water accounting, cropping patterns, irrigation requirements, and drought and flood monitoring. In addition to providing knowledge products, the HAI program will be responsible for maintaining, managing, and archiving the data that will be collected by the irrigation and agriculture departments. Leveraging in this data repository, the HAI program will offer data sharing services to meet the needs of stakeholders including government entities, research institutes, and civil society among others.

The P&D Department, GoSindh in June, 2023 has also notified a HAI Committee under Chairmanship of Project Coordinator, PCMU, consisting of representatives from Irrigation and Agriculture Departments and Project Directors of Water and Agriculture Components of SWAT. The committee is tasked to support the implementation of HAI program, review work plans and progress, outcomes of consultants and recommendations. Support coordination with relevant stakeholders, trouble shooting and settlement of issues.

Since June, 2023 five (05) meetings of HAI Committee are convened, in addition, the PCMU and FAO with support of World Bank has also organized two (02) Stakeholder Consultative workshops in February 2023 and May 2024. In addition, PCMU, FAO and World Bank also arranged a policy level HAI Exposure Trip to Bangkok to study HAI initiatives operated by Royal Irrigation Department.

After due deliberations with project partners and stakeholders it was decided that HAI Program will be implemented in two phases. The first phase is designing of the program, where academia and international and technical professional organizations will collaborate to produce the design and specifications of informatics systems e.g., its data requirements, upgradation of information collection points, gadgets required for data acquisition, processing, and visualization and last but not least the human resource and its capacity building.

In the meantime. The HAI Committee with technical assistance support from PCMU and FAO compiled and finalized the ToRs, which were consequently approved by the donors in November, 2023. 

Further moving forward and after review of available resources it was finalized and agreed that US-Pakistan Centre of Advance Studies in Water Sciences (USPCAWS-MUET) and Center for Environmental and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), Bangladesh will be engaged through World Bank’s  single source selection (SSS) procurement process to collaborate and prepare the plan and design of HAI Program.  

The Project Teams are now in process of finalizing the contracts with International and Local Partners to start the planning and designing process of HAI Program,