Use Case Description
Reservoirs and dams are employed in many ways for irrigation, flood protection or hydropower production purposes. The infrastructure projects and construction are highly dependent on environmental conditions and access to good quality information is essential to define even the most basic characteristics. One of the major challenges to e.g. hydropower development is lack of data to characterise environmental conditions such as hydrology or water quality early in the project. EO data can provide catchment wide information on water quality, sediments and land use in a systematic and structured way, allowing the classification of the dams in terms of potential sedimentation issues or lifetime calculations. Furthermore, the combination of GIS, hydrological information, and Digital Elevation Models (DEM) allows to identify suitable dams and hydropower sites over large regions at extremely low cost. A cost optimization algorithm can then be used to vary many of the design inputs, such as location, type and geometric characteristics of the dam, hydraulic power circuit which allows optimization and visualization of dams and hydropower projects.
The increasing demands for energy, water storage and flood control are particularly pertinent in low-income countries.
Land use/land cover changes as well as the combination hydrological and meteorological hind-and forecasts complement the analysis. Here, worldwide available models are assimilated with satellite data and enriched with in situ data when possible.
