Water Resources Information System
Need
The Government of Andhra Pradesh has been investing in building its water resources information systems that provide visibility to water availability at the administrative and hydrological levels. The State wanted one authoritative system that contains all water related information such as supply, demand, environmental factors etc. to provide decision support to policymakers.
Approach
Water Resource Information System from Vassar Labs provides a solution to bring sensor data, mobile input data, mathematical model derived data, satellite data, web-based data and all other data relevant to water to one platform to bring near real time visibility to all the water related assets for a large state, county, district or block.
- Rainfall
- Ground Water
- Reservoirs – Major, Medium and Minor
- Soil Moisture
- Rivers and Streams
- Irrigation Canals
- Environmental factors like temperature, humidity, sunshine, wind speed etc.
Andhra Pradesh has 100+ major and medium reservoirs, 40,000+ minor reservoirs, About 1 million Water Conservation Structures to recharge Ground Water and real time data from 1900+ Automatic Weather Stations, 1250+ Automatic Ground Water Level sensors, 900+ Soil Moisture sensors and Sensors on Canals and Rivers at strategic locations.
The sensor data is augmented with the data from Hydrology models, Satellite data and data derived from Satellite data like Evapotranspiration, Soil Moisture, Water Spread area to volume estimations for the reservoirs. The Water Resource Information System also gives visibility into Water Conservation Structures used to recharge Groundwater.
Benefit
One system to show all the water assets of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Water Resources Information from sensors augmented by the data derived from models, satellite data and crowd sourced data.
Water Balance and Water Audit
Need
The state of Andhra Pradesh wanted to understand and manage their Water Resources better. Towards that goal, the state wanted to perform an audit for water at different political and hydrologic basin levels both spatially and temporally.
Approach
The state of Andhra Pradesh used the Water Audit solution from Vassar Labs in understanding and managing their water better.
The Water Audit can be for a particular political boundary, River Basin, Minor Basin and Micro Basin and for selected time period as well.
Benefit
The Water Audit provides Decision Support in helping the public policy plan better.
The Water Audit can be performed for a specific event and/or time period for a specific region and/or the entire state.
Village Water Budget
Need
The State of Andhra Pradesh has about 18000 villages and managing the supply and demand of water and other resources at a village level can create a participatory environment in the society and also create positive results.
Approach
The state of Andhra Pradesh used the solution from Vassar Labs to do village level water budget using water supply and demand at a village level. In the supply side, the Rainfall, Conserved Rainfall-Runoff, Excess run-off information, Initial Soil Moisture, Groundwater and water received through canals is accounted for. Demand side consists of Agriculture, Domestic, Livestock & Industrial demands. The user will be able to know if a particular village (or basin/minor or micro basin) is water surplus/deficit.
Benefit
Decision Support on whether a village is water surplus or deficit.
Participatory Ground water Management at a village level.
Watershed Management
Need
A large state in South India with about 1 million water conservation structures to recharge ground water needed a decision support solution to identify new locations for water conservation structures and also to assess the efficacy of existing water conservation structures.
Approach
A decision support solution is built taking into account different parameters like Slope of the land, Land Use Land Cover, Soil texture, Location in the drainage network consisting of second and third order streams, existing water conservation structures and their capacity, Rainfall-runoff to identify best possible locations for new water conservation structures.
Benefit
Decision Support for identification of new water conservation structures.
A mobile app to guide field staff to potential locations
Ground Water Resource Estimation
Need
Ground Water is being used at an alarming rate across the world and there is an urgent need to assess and monitor Ground Water. Ground Water Resource Assessment, categorization and Evaluation system uses the Indian Central Government’s Mandate of GEC -2015 Methodology and Guidelines to automate Ground Water Resource Assessment, Categorization and Estimation.
Approach
To address automating the Ground Water Assessment, Categorization and Estimation the state of Andhra Pradesh in India used GRACE, solution from Vassar Labs for Ground Water Resource Assessment, Categorization and Estimation.
System uses data from Ground Water Level sensors, Rainfall data, Minor and Major Reservoirs Command area, Irrigation Canal Network details, demand from Agriculture, Domestic and Industrial use, borewell distribution and identifies the villages, blocks and basins of Ground Water and their stage of exploitation. This can help in planning for Ground Water Recharge activities and also in automating estimation of Ground Water Resource.
Benefit
- Helps in identifying the Dynamic Ground Water in areas where it is highly exploited to under exploited.
- Scientific way to identify the locations for Water Conservation structures for Ground Water Recharge.
- Ground Water Assessment is typically done manually once in three years. Andhra Pradesh is the first state in India to automate this by using GRACE, solution from Vassar Labs.
Project Monitoring and Reporting
Need
The State required a Project Reporting & Progress Monitoring dashboard that can be used to track and monitor all the prioritized projects that are happening in the State.
Approach
The dashboard is created to support IoT based Smartphone App that gives the visibility of work progress across various projects undertaken by the client. The Progress of each project is updated on a daily basis using Smartphone based mobile application and data seamlessly integrated in central dashboard. The progress of particular project can be analysed on daily basis, issues can be tracked and further analyses are done to provide various heat maps to visualise performance of each project.
Benefit
The dashboard gives the user the status of each project on a near real-time basis. The daily progress of projects with the ability of users to upload pictures of the work that has progressed. It also ensures that the key decision makers can easily locate the bottlenecks and take actions to ensure smooth progress of work.
Soil Moisture based Irrigation and Canal Management
Need
A large irrigation district in South India wanted a system to give visibility of water flow at important points in the irrigation canal network and a decision support to advise releases based on soil moisture and crop needs.
Approach
- To bring transparency to the canal flows, water level sensors were placed at different strategic locations in the canal network
- Soil moisture sensors were placed at critical locations to advise on the soil moisture conditions.
- This information is used along with Satellite data and models built to estimate soil moisture.
Vassar Labs solution provides decision support to
- Provide visibility to canal water flows
- Regulate water to farms based on the soil moisture and crop specific water needs
Benefit
Transparency in water flows at different critical points in the canal network
Advisories based on Soil Moisture and water demand
Reservoir Management
Need
The state of Andhra Pradesh has 100+ reservoirs and wanted a decision support system that optimizes the outflows based on inflows - both predicted and current.
Approach
- The rainfall data – both historical for the last thirty years and real time data from the sensors is used in all the catchment areas of the reservoirs.
- This is used in conjunction with DEM data, computed Rainfall–Runoff to calculate inflows into different reservoirs
- The demand under the command area of the reservoirs is computed based on Cropping pattern, crop Phenology data and other demand factors like drinking water and Industrial needs.
- Based on the current and predicted inflows and the demand, appropriate advisories are raised for water releases.
Value
Based on predicted and current inflows, demand, flood cushion and other parameters, optimized reservoir releases.
Minor Reservoirs Vegetation Estimation
Need
The State of Andhra Pradesh in India has more than 40,000 minor reservoirs and vegetation growth in the minor reservoirs reduces the water storage capacity of the reservoirs. Also the public policy makers need near real time visibility into the extent of vegetation in each of the reservoirs so that vegetation clearing activities can be planned.
Approach
The state of Andhra Pradesh used a solution from Vassar Labs to estimate the extent of vegetation and also to classify the same as dense and sparse vegetation. A machine learning algorithm based on the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Differential Water Index (NDWI) is used for automatic classification and segmentation of satellite imagery to know the extent of vegetation in Minor Reservoirs. The solution also provides visibility of vegetation in minor reservoirs on an on-going basis based on satellite imagery.
Benefit
- The key stakeholders get visibility the extent of vegetation in minor reservoirs
- Public Policy makers can plan for corrective actions and also monitor the vegetation growth in an on-going basis.
