Since the first Since the first Delft-FEWS operational system in South-America, developed for Salto Grande and completed in 2013, a lot has been going on in the region, surely worth a short recap, in case you have missed the last episodes.

Salto Grande is a Hydropower Dam on the Uruguay River. The ownership is shared between Uruguay and Argentina. On a normal regime the dam is regulated for energy production, but during floods it is used for attenuation of the peak. Goal of FEWS-Salto Grande is to provide CTM Salto Grande with an accurate inflow forecast by integrating different telemetry data sources with weather forecasts, hydrological and hydraulic models. This year we have been working on expanding the system with ensemble forecast using GEFS and ECMWF ensemble products.

FEWS-IDEAM, the national flood forecasting system of Colombia, has been developed in the period from 2014 to 2015 for three pilot basins Rio Cauca, Magdalena and Bogota'. In the following years it has been expanded by the users (IDEAM, CVC and CAR) with new basins and features. You can have a look at the latest forecast here. Currently a new operational system dedicated to groundwater is being developed together with CVC for the Cauca valley: FEWS-ESCADES. The aim of the project is to improve our understanding of groundwater, focusing particularly on how groundwater is used during critical drought periods.

In the period from 2014 to 2016 the inflow forecasting system for CEMIG has been developed. CEMIG is a Brazilian energy supplier operating about 55 hydro power plants. The project, with a strong R&D accent, has been performed in collaboration with Institutos Lactec and UFRGS. The operational forecasting and decision support system for CEMIG integrates different sources of ground information, remote sensing data and numerical weather predictions with hydrological and hydrodynamic models to generate short-term inflow forecasts at 11 multi-objective reservoirs. Product of the project is not only the inflow forecasting system of 11 reservoirs, but also a decision support system based on RTC-Tools for optimum reservoir operation.

Currently Deltares is involved in Bolivia supporting SENAMHI and the ministry of Environment and Water (MMAyA) in the development of FEWS-Bolivia. Initially developped in 2015 as flood forecasting system for the Mamoré river, it has the ambition to become a National Flood Forecasting System. During the current project, a series of capacity programs have been developed for SENAMHI and MMAyA, so that the institutions can develop the system autonomously. The use of web services for obtaining and distributing data is a key feature of FEWS-Bolivia.

Would you like to know more about the above projects, or you would like to join forces in the region? Please get in contact with us!