Vacancy title:
Terms of Reference for Automation of EO information products to monitor the Nile Basin

Jobs at:

Deadline of this Job:
Friday, September 22 2023 

Summary
Date Posted: Friday, September 15 2023, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is a partnership between the riparian states of the River Nile established in 1999 as a transitional mechanism to foster cooperative development and management of the common water resources of the Nile. The NBI is guided by the Shared Vision whose objective is “To achieve sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources”.

NBI is implementing a Nile River Basin Monitoring Strategy with the objective: “to have a comprehensive suite of river basin monitoring programs in place that supports decision makers, professionals and other stakeholders in the planning, development, management and protection of the shared Nile Water Resources to achieve the Shared Vision of the Nile Basin Countries”.

To improve data and information services at Nile-SEC, the EUMETCast ground receiving station was recently procured and installed on NBI’s premises with support from the World Bank under Nile Cooperation for Climate Resilience (NCCR) project. The station receives massive amounts of Earth observation (EO) data, some of it in a nearly real time.

The quarterly basin monitoring bulletin of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is one of its information products. The bulletin is being developed quarterly using public domain Earth Observation data such as FAO WaPOR data, FEWS Net, etc.

Currently there is a need to enhance basin monitoring EO information products, availing selected key data in the IKP for downloading, displaying some of the key information on the IKP, and enhance the quarterly basin monitoring bulletin using EO data from EUMETCast receiver and other EO portals to support decision makers in the Nile Basin.

2 Context
The Nile Basin Initiative produces a quarterly basin monitoring bulletin using publicly available Earth observation (EO) data from various portals. The bulletin contains crucial information for decision-makers, and it should be continually upgraded in terms of substance and output speed.

The EUMETCast ground receiving station at Nile-SEC was recently installed to enhance data and information services for Nile Basin nations for a variety of water and natural resource-related activities. The receiver receives a massive amount of data, some of which is near real time.

The receiver is crucial to NBI to improve the information contained in its knowledge and information products, such as the quarterly basin bulletin and various water resources related models as well as creating data that is ready for analysis and accessible to the public through NBI portal. Such a near real-time and massive amounts of data should be automated and online using free and open-source programming languages such as Python and R.

Therefore, NBI is planning to develop an online interactive basin monitoring information products that can be linked to NBI Basin Monitoring Bulletin and IKP using EO data from EUMETCast receiver and complimentary data from public domain EO portals.

3 Objective
The objective of this consultancy service is to develop an automated online interactive basin monitoring EO information products such as maps, charts, tables, etc. using EO data from EUMETCast station and public domain EO portals and thereby automate the NBI basin monitoring bulletin.

Specific objectives include –
1. To select key water resources related EO datasets from EUMETCast receiver and public domain portals to develop an online basin monitoring information products and basin monitoring bulletin.

2. To redefine the content of the quarterly basin monitoring bulletin of the Nile Basin.

3. To develop online interactive basin monitoring information products and NBI quarterly basin monitoring bulletin using data from EUMETCast receiver and other open data portal repositories.

4. Develop and automated basin monitoring bulletin.

5. To display some the key selected information on the IKP and avail the background information for download.

6. To build capacity of NBI staff on the usage of open-source programming software tools

4 Scope of the assignment
The consultant shall develop an online interactive EO information product for Nile Basin and thereby link with the basin monitoring bulletin of the Nile Basin using EO data from EUMETCast receiver and other public domain EO portals, generate automated Basin Monitoring bulletin, avail the information in a downloadable format, and build the NBI capacity during the whole process.

Specific tasks
The consultant will work on the following specific tasks.

1) To develop an online interactive information product including time series graphs, maps, etc. using EO data from EUMETCast receiver and other public domain portals, make it available on the Nile Basin Integrated Knowledge Portal (IKP) for public use. Here, users should be able to interact with each of the online information products by basin, subbasin, catchment, time step etc. Also, users should be able to export and download the information on pdf, csv, jpg format.

2) Automation of basin monitoring bulletin:
• Review and redefine existing content and temporal resolution of basin monitoring bulletin.
• Integrate information products developed under no 1 into the NBI's basin monitoring bulletin.
• Enable to export the bulletin to pdf on click.

3) Automate the creation of data that is ready for analysis from EUMETCast receiver receives. Users from NBI countries, including researchers, modelers, students, etc., will be able to access this data through the NBI portal consume it for their specific projects.

4) Integrate the output into NBI integrated knowledge portal.

5) The consultant shall provide a 5-day training for NBI staff members on the developed tool.

5 Qualifications
Education:
• At least master’s degree in water resources, hydrology, Climate, Hydro informatics, Geographic Information Systems, or related degree.

Required Experience & Skills:
At least must have 10 years of work experience flowing areas.
• Expertise in working with remote sensing/grided datasets and developing geospatial analysis.
• Proficiency in using of Python or R languages for data analytics.
• Water and climate related expertise such as hydrology, meteorology etc.
• Experience of working with EUMETCast receiver data to develop information products.
• Experience in developing online interactive information products.
• Development of Dashboards and online interface

6 Deliverables and schedule

7 Level of effort
The task shall take 40 man-days over the course of three months. At the beginning of the consulting, a comprehensive timetable must be created.

8 Implementation arrangements
The contract shall be a lump-sum contract where payment shall be upon submission of acceptable deliverables (see deliverables list and payment schedule above). Nile-SEC shall be responsible for the technical oversight. The Consultant shall work closely with the Earth Observation Expert under the supervision of the Head of Basin Wide Programme.
The consultant shall work from his/her home venue.

ebbe, Uganda) on 20th September, 2023.


Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 120

Level of Education: Postgraduate Degree

Job application procedure
This call is for individual consultants. Also, interested firms may submit individual consultants from its capable team. The Individual Consultants submitted by the firm will be individually evaluated based on their qualifications and relevant experience reflected in their CVs and the experience of the firm shall not be considered. It will be optional for the contract to be drawn in the names of the Individual forwarded by the firm or be drawn in the names of the firm and this will be determined during contract negotiation.

Interested applicants are advised to submit applications electronically to the Executive Director through wrconsult@nilebasin.org Application/cover letter indicating the title of the assignment accompanied by detailed curriculum vitae should reach the Executive Director not later than 12:00 pm (Local Time in Entebbe, Uganda) on 20th September, 2023.


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