The CARISMA project (Catchment Risk Assessments using Multi-Scale Data) aims to address issues of data scarcity in catchment water balance assessments through integrating independent sources of information from community-led monitoring (hydrological 'citizen science') and recent developments in remote sensing. The project focusses on two study areas in sub-Saharan Africa, in Ethiopia and Tanzania, where such problems are particularly acute, but aims to develop a more generally applicable methodology. Many catchments or river basins undergo water stress due to a combination of over-abstraction, changes in land-use, or climatic variability and changes. Water stresses may be felt as long-term trends over whole catchment areas, but more often are seen as episodic events such as seasonal or multi-annual drought, and may be spatially located in certain river tributaries or sub-catchments. It is then difficult to identify the underlying causes of water stress, and how particular groups of water users could contribute to potential solutions, if insufficient data are available in the right place and at the right time. Our recent research has demonstrated the viability of community-led monitoring to provide credible key hydrological information to improve understanding of surface and groundwater resources, and that multi-level governance approaches are a feasible way of addressing water management policy. Our work has shown that data-sharing platforms (such as 'Environmental Virtual Observatories' or 'Decision Theatres') have potential to help integrate and present information is ways that support decision making at all levels, but their design needs to be user-driven to facilitate their adoption. These emerging paradigms open up new opportunities for better environmental management, but require participatory development of open and transparent systems for integration of multiple sources of information to provide successful outcomes. This project aims to build on our previous research by co-developing with partners and stakeholders in two catchment in Ethiopia (Abay River Basin Authority) and Tanzania (Rufiji River Basin Authority) a prototype data integration and presentation platform that will quantify key hydrological indicators of catchment water balances at spatial scales appropriate to developing sustainable water management policies and practices in water-stressed catchments. Indicators relevant to stakeholder groups representing community, ecosystem, business, and governance interests will be identified using a participatory approach. The proposed platform uses publicly available remote sensing data for spatial assessments of key hydrological components, particularly rainfall and evapotranspiration, and community-led low-cost monitoring of ground-based variables (including rainfall, river levels and flows, and groundwater levels) to complement available formal monitoring networks. Evaluation of how uncertainty in each component can contribute to overall understanding of water balances will be assessed using a standardised water accounting modelling framework. This can then support better quantification of contributors to catchment water scarcity, to inform multi-stakeholder decision making. Understanding of uncertainty reduction from the different data sources will provide the basis for guidance on appropriate design of monitoring networks, and evidence to support a risk-based approach to water management. The project output of a prototype data platform will provide a key step towards our partner WWF-UK's strategy of working towards a generic capability for developing and sharing better hydrological data to underpin their global activities, particularly through their Water Stewardship Programme. Close involvement of WWF-Tanzania in this project will provide a tangible first step towards this goal.

Context Climate and demographic changes in Africa and Asia will threaten the livelihood and billions of people who depend on environmental resources, and the environment itself and its services will be increasingly threatened. Some of the most significant threats are the impacts of changes in floods and droughts and the impacts of human water system interventions (increased abstractions, storage dams, pollution, etc.). Many of the changes are unavoidable, water is required for generating food and energy and climate changes are going to occur. Water managers need to efficiently and effectively adapt water-ecological-environmental systems to preserve ecological health whilst ensuring a sustainable livelihood for those who depend on the environment. How can this be done at global scale? How can water managers reconcile and integrate remote sensing information, climate and hydrological model predictions, water rights/license and water use information to understand the viability of future ecological and economic water services and evaluate the impacts of future interventions? Proposed contribution Our proposed consortium and partners have seen evidence in our work that effective and sustainable water management is enabled when 3 conditions are met: data on hydrological reality and sectoral water use is available, analysis of the impacts of water system interventions is feasible and sufficiently accurate, and stakeholders have a credible involvement in water management decisions (with appropriate and accessible information and tools). The aim of our project is to help enable these conditions to manifest globally in a cost-effective manner by providing a generic adaptable on/offline tool that can be quickly configured, sustainably maintained, and extended over time for any basin by consortia of different user types (basin organisations, NGOs, producers, etc.). To this end we propose a water data visualisation, analysis and communication portal guided by a consortium of water stewardship interested organisations. The online/offline software platform we've called the Water Stewardship Portal (WS Portal) would combine the 3 essential components of practical water management into 4 main modules (think 'tabs' on a web browser): 1. Storage and visualisation of spatial hydrological data (GIS, remote sensing, time-series) 2. Water accounting registry 3. Intervention impact assessment 4. Decision dashboard Case-study The portal will be applied to Kenya's Tana River Basin, which covers 22% of the country's land mass and hosts 18% of Kenya's population. The basin supports a wide variety of ecosystem and economic services including hydropower production, water supply interests, reservoirs for irrigation, and a variety of ecosystems. The Tana basin supports roughly 90% of Nairobi's water supplies and generates 60% of Kenya's power. The basin is home to intensive agricultural production by Kenyan small and large farmers and multinationals; in some parts of the basin, over 80% of inhabitants rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Any change or increase in water use by any of these sectors could be controversial and lead to conflict; consumptive uses will reduce flows which have already been strongly reduced by regulating hydropower dams. For these reason the tool, with its aim to link together: accurate estimation of water use by the sectors (particularly agriculture), incorporate that into a hydrological model which is linked to a water rights database and a generic resource intervention impact model, will be valuable. The tool is to be applied in collaboration with the Water Resource Management Authority (WRMA) of Kenya, colleagues from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, and international partners interested in water stewardship, including M&S, WWF, and The World Bank.

We rely on access to water for so many important aspects of everyday life, for example: domestic water, food production, industrial production, transport, recreation, maintaining ecosystems, to name just a few. With increasing pressures on our water supplies from growing populations, climate changes and other factors, we need to continue to improve management of this precious resource if it is to remain a benefit to society. Good water management requires a sound knowledge of how much is present under different seasonal conditions, as well as how we use it and the consequences of this use, or potential overuse. Quantifying the highs and lows of the natural variability of water around us traditionally requires many decades of measurements to provide enough information to predict future availability. Unfortunately, this depth of water knowledge is not available for much of the world, and with our increasingly globalised societies this has consequences for all of us. Fortunately, improving international cooperation and a growing focus of water science on the global scale means that there are many recent developments that could be used to address this water knowledge gap. Scientists are developing increasingly accurate computer models of the global water cycle and proliferating satellites are measuring water from space in ever more detail. However, many people with a role in water management are not trained experts in either computer models or satellite data, limiting the value of this new data to everyday water challenges. This project will take the best data available from these exciting new science outputs, test it and make it available to all in an easy to use, online web map platform that will provide important water information anywhere in the world. Potential users of the platform will be involved at every stage of its development, ensuring it is directly useful and understandable. The easy to use platform will allow any user to get an independent, local estimate, of the range of water availability in their locality and help them understand the implications of the use of water as a resource, whether that is for irrigating crops, water for domestic supply or any other use. The project will also test the outputs of the platform for the Breede region of South Africa, where multiple, sometimes competing uses, of local water resources presents a challenge for fair access. An existing water stewardship project in the area, run by WWF-SA, has mobilised people and organisations with a direct interest in the fair management of water and they will be engaged in the local testing and improvement of the platform. The platform will be developed jointly by water@leeds scientists from the University of Leeds and the Earthwatch Institute, an international environmental charity with a track record of citizen involvement in global water science and the development of online platforms. Local South African expertise in water will be provided by Rhodes University, ensuring local relevance in the testing of the platform. The project will be guided by a number of key partners, WWF, Marks and Spencer, SSBN Ltd., as well as Richard Carter and Associates. The breadth of partners and their networks will ensure that a wide range of water issues will be represented, including; water risks to global food supply chains, environmental needs, and community water supply.

Energy supply for the UK, and for the World as a whole, will experience major changes during the next 20 years, as states seek secure energy supplies, combined with low costs, and sustainable environmental impacts. Most of world energy currently derives from combustion of fossil fuel. The UK is no exception.In the UK, fossil fuel (oil) dominates transport use, and this is unlikely to change in the near future. Electricity and heat generation is dominated by gas (41%) and coal (34%), with 20% from nuclear, only 3% from renewables, and 2% imported electricity. This gas and coal will from now onwards largely be imported, paying costs to suppliers outside the UK. This also means security of supply is not guaranteed. Can improvements be made to the use of these energy sources?A key environmental problem is that fossil fuel combustion releases CO2 to the atmosphere. This is now, beyond reasonable doubt, linked to global warming and climate change. Atmospheric CO2 also dissolves in ocean water, forcing an increased acidity greater than any time in the past 20 Million years. Even those who still do not believe in climate change cannot escape the inevitability of ocean acidification / with as yet un-predicted consequences. For this reason alone, atmospheric CO2 must be reduced.To enable continued use of fossil fuels it is an urgent requirement to de-carbonise their combustion. The Stern Review of Climate Change Economics in 2006 clearly re-stated that significant progress must be made during the ten years until 2017.This research proposal addresses the fossil fuel issues in two ways: Firstly, to create a UK Centre of university expertise in the capture of CO2 from power plants. Current industrial systems rely on chemical absorption by solvents, but require a very high energy input, which reduces the environmental gain. The Centre will focus on new technologies of CO2 separation by adsorption onto nanoporous materials, by filtration of CO2 from power plant flue gases by semi-permeable membranes, and by membrane and adsorption separation processes for the production of oxygen from air, to enable oxy-fuel combustion and efficient CO2 separation.Secondly, we acknowledge that there is, and will be, a need to remove existing CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. The reductions proposed from power plant emissions do not reduce existing CO2, but rather just make the increase slower. To control the earth atmosphere and produce a sustainable climate requires extraction of CO2 already emitted. This is routinely achieved, at low cost, by vegetation. We will create an entirely new centre of university expertise which will focus on using bio-mass from agriculture, forestry and waste. This can firstly make bio-fuel to replace fossil sources, and the residues can be pyrolised to form charcoal. Such charcoal has been used in traditional cultures to enhance soil fertility, and locks up carbon for thousands of years. Improvements in land use in the EU, the USA, and developing world can achieve this, by an integration of engineering, soil science, and social benefit to cultivators.Edinburgh (with the British Geological Survey and Heriot-Watt) already hosts the UK's largest academic centre investigating geological burial of captured CO2. There are existing multi-skilled networks at Edinburgh linking land use, agriculture, social, legal and economic analysis, chemical engineering and petroleum geoscience. Creation of the Carbon Capture Centre will be an ideal complementary activity, and the range of expertise, from atmospheric capture, to power-plant capture to cultivation and geological burial will be unique.Outputs from the Centre can help the UK to combust coal and gas with environmentally clean methods, to enhance energy security by diversifying away from fossil fuel sources, and to commence the direct clean-up of CO2 from the atmosphere in an energy and financially efficient, sustainable way.

Energy supply for the UK, and for the world, will experience major changes during the next 20 years. Many nations seek secure energy supplies, combined with low costs, and sustainable environmental impacts. Most of world energy currently derives from combustion of fossil fuel. The UK is no exception.In the UK, fossil fuel (oil) dominates transport use, and is difficult to change in the near future. Electricity and heat generation is dominated by gas (41%) and coal (34%), with 20% from nuclear, only 3% from renewables, and 2% imported electricity. This gas and coal will from now onwards largely be imported, paying costs to suppliers outside the UK. This also means security of supply is not guaranteed. Can improvements be made to the use of these energy sources?A key environmental problem is that fossil fuel combustion releases fossil CO2 to the atmosphere. This is now, beyond reasonable doubt, linked to global warming and climate change. Atmospheric CO2 also dissolves in ocean water, forcing an increased acidity greater than any time in the past 20 Million years. Even those who still do not believe in climate change cannot escape the inevitability of ocean acidification / with as yet un-predicted consequences. For this reason alone, atmospheric CO2 must be reduced.To enable continued use of fossil fuels, whilst renewable sources are developed, it is an urgent requirement to de-carbonise their combustion. The Stern Review of Climate Change Economics in 2006 clearly re-stated that significant progress must be made during the ten years until 2017.This research proposition addresses the fossil fuel issues in two ways: Firstly, to create a UK Centre of university expertise in the capture of CO2 from power plant. Current industrial systems rely on chemical absorption by solvents, but require a very high energy input, which reduces the environmental gain. The Centre will focus on new technologies of CO2 separation by adsorption onto nanoporous materials materials, by filtration of CO2 from power plant flue gases by newly created semi-permeable membranes, and by membrane separation of oxygen from air, to enable oxy-fuel combustion and efficient CO2 separation.Secondly, we acknowledge that there is, and will be, a need to remove existing CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. The reductions proposed from power plant emissions do not reduce existing CO2, they just make the increase slower. To control the earth atmosphere and produce a sustainable climate requires extraction of CO2 already emitted. This is routinely achieved, at low cost, by vegetation. We will create an entirely new centre of university expertise which will focus on using bio-mass from agriculture, forestry and waste. This can firstly make bio-fuel to replace fossil sources, and the residues can be pyrolised to form charcoal. Such charcoal has been used in traditional cultures to enhance soil fertility, and locks up carbon for thousands of years. Improvements in land use in the EU, USA, and developing world can achieve this, by an integration of engineering, soil science, and social benefit to cultivators.The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University already host the UK's largest academic centre investigating the geological burial of CO2 captured from power plant. There are existing multi-skilled networks in Edinburgh linking land use, agriculture, social, legal and economic analysis, chemical engineering and petroleum geoscience. Creation of the Carbon Capture Centre will be an ideal complementary activity, and the range of expertise, from atmospheric capture, to power-plant capture to cultivation and geological burial will be unique.Outputs from the Centre can help the UK to combust coal and gas with environmentally clean methods, to enhance energy security by diversifying away from fossil fuel sources, and to commence the direct clean-up of CO2 from the atmosphere in a energy efficient, and financially efficient, sustainable way.