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

JOB DETAILS:
The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is a regional intergovernmental partnership of ten Nile Basin countries, namely; Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, The Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, that seeks to promote cooperative management and development of the shared Nile Basin water resources for win-win benefits, promote regional peace and security. The NBI was established in 1999. The NBI operates from the Nile-SEC located in Entebbe, the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program Coordination Unit (NELSAP-CU) located in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Nile Basin Initiative, with support from the World Bank through the CIWA Trust Fund, seeks to expand its data and analytics services (NB-DAS) for climate-resilient water resources management in the Nile Basin through innovative information services for climate – resilient investment planning.

With improvements in data collection technology, the availability of data relevant for decisions in many spheres of life, including for water and related natural resources management, is growing astronomically. Most such data is available in the public domain. Further, rapid, precise, and diverse Earth Observation (EO) information is becoming available and freely accessible in the public domain. EO is used to monitor diverse river basin processes, which are critically important for the effective operational management of water and related natural resources. Earth Observation information is increasingly used for environmental monitoring (wetlands, land degradation, water quality), river basin hydrology (soil moisture, water levels, temperature, groundwater movement), climate change and other natural processes. NBI intends to leverage on the data available today in the public domain that is several folds larger and more comprehensive in term of geographic and thematic coverage than those collected through in-situ efforts by countries. Ground observed data from the countries shall complement that from global sources. NBI is planning to build the capacity for the Nile Basin countries on free powerful analytical EO tool (QGIS).

2 Context
The sheer speed in growth of the volume of data, the computing infrastructure needed for data storage, process, analysis, and meaningful interpretation, and the skills needed to make use of such data have been limiting the use of these data in real life. However, progress made in cloud-based solutions for data storage, analysis, and interpretation, such as using cloud-based analytics (e.g. Software as Service), has helped the business world to make expanded the exploitation of both the modern data storage and cloud analytics for making operational and, often, real-time decisions. To Enable NBI member country experts integrate EO data analysis in their water resource management activity, NBI is planning a training on QGIS software. This training is a follow-up training to our previous training on R and Python January 2023 in Bujumbura, Kigali and March 2023 in Kigali Rwanda.

Objective
The objective of the training is to strengthen the analytical capacity of NBI staff and member state water resource experts on the usage of open-source GIS software tools for water resources and related natural resources. For the operational management of water and related natural resources, NBI will implement cloud-based data analytics services for NBI member states. As a result, this training will increase overall capacity on this tool and enable professionals to manipulate, analyze, and use the cloud-based and non-cloud analytics services that NBI will implement.

Specific objectives include -
1. To capacitate NBI staff and NBI member country water resource experts/modulars with open-source GIS software tools to generate different water resource related information products.
2. To demonstrate to participants various data-related components of a GIS, such as data models in GIS, data input, data editing, data visualization, metadata, and geographic database management.
3. To conduct spatial and temporal Water resource analysis using GIS.
4. To establish an understanding of how to use EO data and GIS approaches to tackle water resource related challenges.

4 Scope of the training
The consultant will provide training to NBI technical staffs and NBI member country experts on QGIS software tools to analyze Earth Observation (EO) data for water resources management. The trainer shall develop training manual/modules, PowerPoint slides and facilitate the training. The materials will be shared with the EO expert one week before the training for review.

Specific tasks:
1. Develop relevant training materials/module and slides, PowerPoint presentation.

2. Facilitate physical training for 4 days.

3. Introduction to QGIS software tools:

• Understanding the basics of GIS in water resource management
• Broad overview of QGIS tools including QGIS components, interfaces, data models and data types.
• Spatial data sources for water resources and related natural resources focussing on EO data types.

4. EO data collection from different EO portals and developing water resource database in QGIS. This part includes Importing, cleaning, transformation, processing, etc. of data from different sources in different formats (such as HDF, NetCDF, text, csv, GeoJson, Tiff, shp, excel,etc.

5. Conducting spatial analysis using water related QGIS plugins and geoprocessing tools. This part should focus on driving hydrological parameters such as slope, river networks, generate watershed boundary, land use land cover, evapotranspiration, rainfall etc using GIS technique from variety of public domain EO data sources.

6. Generate different visuals using QGIS plugin such as maps, time series charts, table etc.

7. Estimating Water balance using earth observation (EO) data using QGIS software tool. This exercise should consider at least two water balance models.

8. The trainer shall use Earth Observation/geospatial data related to water resources for the Exercises. And all the exercise data should be customized to the Nile basin.


9. Write a brief report of the training. The report should capture information related to participants (gender, profession, country.) and level of satisfaction among other things.

5 Training approach
The trainer shall deliver the training physically at a selected site.
The training shall be conducted in sequential modules. Each module involves lectures using overhead slides and step-by-step hands-on exercise. Training exercises should be prepared using real data covering Nile Basin area. Training materials shall be distributed to the trainees before the start of the training. Trainees should use their own laptops for the training.

6 Duration of the training
The training shall take place for 4 days.

7 Deliverables
• Five days training facilitation
• Training materials/module and slides
• A brief report on the training

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

Required Experience & Skills:
• At least 10 years of experience in the flowing areas
• Demonstrated experience in using QGIS for water resource analysis and modelling.
• Experience of using EO data for water resources analysis and modelling
• Proven work experience in producing training materials and delivering trainings.
• Strong facilitation skills of training workshops

9 Implementation arrangements
The consultant shall sign a contract with Nile-SEC under the overall supervision of the Deputy Executive Director. The consultant shall work closely with the Earth Observation and Remote sensing expert.


Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 120

Level of Education: Postgraduate Degree

Job application procedure
This call is for an individual consultant. The individual consultant will be evaluated based on her/his experiences reflected in her/his CV.
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, 2023.


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