HydroCrowd

HydroCrowd is a research project of the Justus Liebig University Giessen, which investigates the potential of participatory monitoring to increase the availability of hydro-climatic data for sustainable water management, especially in remote areas in the global south.

The project will test different approaches to engaging volunteers by implementing and evaluating a participatory hydro-climatic monitoring program in selected mountain regions in Ecuador, Honduras, and Tanzania. Furthermore, it will demonstrate how the data collected by the volunteers can be used in hydrological modeling and, therefore, improve the prediction of climate change's impact on water resources in data-scarce regions. The project outputs can be used to guide the development of future participatory monitoring programs and stimulate upscaling of the approach to other regions to address the lack of hydro-climatic data for evidence-based decision-making and sustainable water management.

Volunteers participate by reporting measurements from easy-to-use instruments at weather and water stations installed in the project areas in Ecuador, Honduras, and Tanzania. These measurements include rainfall, air temperature, humidity, and the water level and turbidity of rivers and streams. To evaluate the quality of the data, the data will be compared with automated reference measurements at selected sites. These are then systematically examined and tested for their suitability for modeling. This app enables easy submission of data by the volunteers and provides instructions on how to collect data. Furthermore, users can view the data previously submitted by other volunteers. As the remote study areas have limited network access, it is recommended to download the map of your region and the locations of the stations before going to any of the HydroCrowd stations.

In addition to reporting measurements from the HydroCrowd stations, volunteers can create spots to record their own rainfall data and report weather events using ‘photo notes.’