Uganda: Consultant for Short-term to Seasonal River Flow Forecasting System for Nile Basin - Preparatory Phase

1. Introduction

The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is an intergovernmental partnership led by 10 Member States. The partnership was established on 22nd February 1999 and is guided by a Shared Vision Objective: ‘To achieve sustainable socio-economic development through equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin Water resources’.

The NBI provides a unique medium for the countries of the Nile Basin to move toward a cooperative process to realize tangible benefits in the basin and build a solid foundation of trust and confidence. The Nile Council of Ministers [Nile-COM] serves as the highest decision-making body of the NBI. The Nile-COM is supported by the NBI Technical Advisory Committee [Nile-TAC], which is composed of two senior officials from each member country.

NBI is managed from three Centers. The first Centre at Entebbe, Uganda, forms the NBI Secretariat (Nile-SEC) and was launched in September 1999. It has a coordinating role across the Nile Basin, supports the platform for Basin-wide dialogue, and provides and manages an interactive, intelligent, basin knowledge base and promotes Water resources management. Another Centre at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ENTRO) and a third Centre at Kigali, Rwanda (NELSAP-CU) both manage the facilitation of cooperative water resources development in their respective sub-regions.

NBI Core Functions: the NBI performs three core functions:

· Building Cooperation. The NBI main objective is to facilitate, support and nurture cooperation amongst the Nile Basin countries to promote timely and efficient joint actions required for securing benefit from the common Nile Basin water resources

· Water Resource Management. The NBI provides member countries with analytic tools and a shared information system that will enable monitoring and the sustainable management of the basin.

· Water Resource Development. The NBI assists member countries to identify development opportunities and prepare projects and seek investments. Development programs are focused on power trade and generation, agriculture and watershed management.

To achieve the Shared Vision Objective, NBI prepared a 10 year strategy. The 10 year strategy identifies six strategic priorities (referred to as ‘Goals’) which NBI’s activities will focus on over the coming 10 years. The strategic priorities are: water security, energy security, food security, environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation, and strengthening transboundary water governance.

The 10 year strategy is implemented through five year strategic plans (for Nile-SEC: Basin Wide Program) of NBI centers.

2. Background

Under Goal 5 of the strategy, with the financial and technical support of the WB through the NCoRe project, the Nile-SEC intends to develop a short term to seasonal river flow forecasting system.

The Nile Basin, with an area of over 3.2 million km², is source of livelihoods to over 250 million people residing within the basin boundary. The basin area stretches over 11 countries and, thus, making the Nile one of the most shared river basins in the world; it is one of the world’s five rivers that are shared by 9 to 11 countries. The Nile Basin stream flow patterns are influenced by the variations in climate and topography/altitude. The Blue Nile is highly seasonal with most of its flow occurring between July and September, while the White Nile flow is stable over the year. The Nile Basin, compared to other large river basins, has relatively low runoff coefficient. Water quality is generally influenced by human activities and urban areas and industrial activities are the main influencing factors.

The upper parts of the Nile Basin are characterized by mountain ranges and steep slopes. In the middle reaches there are large plateau regions, while the lower parts have wide flood plains and ultimately the huge Nile Delta.

The Nile basin has such a huge size, diversity in climate, complexity of hydrology, potentially diverse user needs, and experiences extreme events including droughts, floods. The Nile Basin river flow forecast system is expected to comprise a number of different approaches, models and system components. It is also about providing information about volume of stream flow that can be expected at a particular point in the river network of a basin in advance. The lead time could range from few days to seasons. The forecast system will have a web-interface so that the forecast information is easily disseminated through the NBI Integrated Knowledge Portal.

The river flow forecasting of the NB will be used for operational decision making. It shall help managing the releases from water storage facilities thereby conserve water; improve planning decisions on cropping; improve safety of water infrastructure, and provides opportunities to extract water during local flow peaks.

The Nile-SEC intends to employ the services of an individual consultant to support the development of the conceptual design of the forecast system based on user needs. This document presents the terms of reference for an individual consultant that will be contracted by Nile-SEC to support in user needs assessment and development of the conceptual design.

3. Objective

The specific objective of the consultancy is to establish user needs/requirements and develop design specifications of the Nile Basin short to long range river flow forecast system. This contributes to a higher level objective, i.e. to ensure that the forecast system meets user needs for long term practical use by the target users.

4. Approach

The forecast system is planned to be developed in two stages. First, in the preparatory phase, the user needs shall be established and a conceptual design of the system developed. Second, following the completion of the preparatory phase, after validation of user needs and the conceptual design, the full forecast system shall be developed.

The river flow forecast system shall be developed on based available and proven technologies adapted to the Nile Basin. Further, it shall be developed integrating data and information inputs that are expected to be available over long term to avoid disruption of the forecast generation duet to interruption of data services from third parties.

5. Scope of work

The scope of work shall include all data/information collection, consultation with relevant stakeholders, analysis and development of the conceptual design of the river flow forecast system. The tasks of the consultant include, but not limited, to the following:

a)Work Package 1: Review of available forecast systems

· Review the concept note on Nile Basin river flow forecast system prepared by Nile-Sec to understand the rationale and scope of the river flow forecast System. Refine the concept note based on discussion with Nile-SEC to ensure the concept note remains up to date and integrates most recent information on river flow forecast system development. The concept note shall be used for communication of the concept, development process and uses of the forecast system with potential users.

· Prepare technical background document on worldwide available and uses of short – range (up to 10 days lead time) and medium to long range (season) river flow forecast systems. As part of this task, the consultant shall first develop a typology of river flow forecast systems taking in to account key factors, such as technologies used, data needs, flexibility, forecast information they generate, lead time. The background document will be used to inform selection of approaches, methods and components for the Nile Basin river flow forecast system. The document should provide comparative analyses on the advantages and disadvantages of the available river flow forecast systems, and data needs and availability. It should also consider the challenges and gaps, and what need to take into account. The consultant shall submit the background document, improve based on client feedbacks and resubmit final version.

· Prepare a survey questionnaire to gather information on current practices in the Nile Basin countries in the use of river flow forecast systems. The questionnaire shall be discussed together with Nile-SEC and, when finalized, shall be used to document types of river flow forecasting approaches and technologies used in Nile Basin countries and NBI centers (ENTRO and NELSAP-CU).

· Administer the survey together with Nile-SEC (Nile-SEC shall support in identification and communication of national stakeholders), compile and analyze the information collected and develop the baseline assessment report on use of river flow forecast system in Nile Basin countries and NBI centers. Nile basin specific limitations and operational conditions shall be defined and considered.

b)Work Package 2: User Needs assessment

The river flow forecast system shall be developed to meet user expectations and needs. In this regard, establishing the user needs is the key building blocks of the process for the development of the forecast system. The consultant shall be responsible for designing appropriate process (questionnaire, user engagement format, etc) for gathering user needs and development of the user requirement specs to be used to drive the design of the forecast system. Key tasks are:

· Prepare questionnaire/template for gathering user needs/requirements;

· Assist client in planning the regional needs assessment workshop, including setting agenda, workshop concept note, facilitating discussions and documenting discussion outcomes;

· Carry out a structured user needs assessment during the workshop; document the user needs and validate with the users during workshop;

· Ensure proper consolidation and integration of the user needs and requirements, for various spatial and temporal scales, with deep understanding of the related water management functions;

· After the workshop, develop a user needs/requirements specs doc and submit the same to client. The consultant shall refine the needs/requirements specs doc to the client accommodating the client’s comments.

c)Work Package 3: Conceptual design and terms of reference

· Based on the user needs specs determined above, the consultant shall prepare a conceptual design of the forecast system. The conceptual design shall be reviewed by the client and stakeholders. The consultant shall improve the conceptual design to reflect feedbacks from the client and its stakeholders. The design shall include, at a minimum, the following:

· Detailed description of the types of uses for which the forecast system that shall employed for.

· Overall architecture of the forecast system: taking into account the user needs and the specific characteristics of the various identified uses of the system, the architecture shall elaborate the functional design of the forecast system. The Nile Basin may have different forecast systems (e.g. multi-functionality system) depending on the sub-basins need. The consultant shall provide expert opinion on the best system design that meets the wide range of requirements.

· Description of the components of forecast system; with sufficient technical details

· Design specifications for the river flow forecasting system based on international standard.

· Description of specification of data inputs and sources of data

· Other elements of the conceptual design as identified early in the assignment.

· Work the client to develop a work flow and plan for establishing a new river forecasting system.

· The consultant shall prepare detailed terms of reference for the development of river flow forecast system which must include the scope of work, budget and the deliverables and their timing.

Interested qualified individual Consultants are advised to download the full Terms of Reference for this assignment from http://nilebasin.org/index.php/consultancies and to submit the following as part of their application.

• Their most recent CV
• A 2 page technical proposal elaborating their technical approach, methodology and work plan for carrying out the assignment
• A financial proposal

iApplications addressed to the Executive Director shouls be sent to watervacancy@nilebasin.org with a copy to embonye@nilebasin.org not later than 30th May 2018 at 1700 EAT clearly indicating the title of this assignment in the subject of the mail.