During the weeks of 21 November through 2 December, Wilco Terink and Sonu Khanal from FutureWater provided the final block of training in Water Resources Modelling to ARA-Sul and ARA-Norte in Pemba, Mozambique. This training was funded by NUFFIC’s Tailor-Made Training Programme, which is part of the Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP II), and is specifically meant to enhance the overall functioning of an organization by training a selected group of its staff members.
The two selected ARAs were facing a knowledge constraint in how-to use and apply a Water Resources Model, in order to have a stronger advisory role towards policy and decision makers and people living in their management areas. For this reason, these ARAs requested a Tailor-Made Training in “Water Resources Modelling to Support Decision Making for ARAs”.
The first training was already provided during the week of 11-15 July. This first week basically focused on modelling theory and learning to work with the Spatial Processes in HYdrology (SPHY) model. This final block of 2 weeks training anticipated on:
- Building a Water Resources Model (SPHY) for a river basin of their interest;
- Improving the quality of this model by using local input data (stations) and performing quality checks on these data;
- Performing sensitivity analyses;
- Calibrating the model.
The participants worked on the following river basins that are partly or completely located within Mozambique:
- Save (ARA-Sul);
- Limpopo (ARA-Sul);
- Incomati (ARA-Sul);
- Umbeluzi (ARA-Sul);
- Messalo (ARA-Norte);
During these two weeks multiple interactive presentation sessions were organized where the participants presented their progress to their colleagues and us. This was highly appreciated and was an interesting learning process where active discussions between the participants eventually led to a better model understanding and improved results. The training was finalized with a ceremony where all participants received a well-deserved certificate.
