India Water Portal

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India Water Portal Newsletter - September 2007 

The India Water Portal (www.indiawaterportal.org) is a rich online resource base and virtual community on water. The Water Portal is an idea that was mooted by the National Knowledge Commission, which is interested in the creation of a stable of knowledge portals in critical areas. The Water Portal was launched officially in January 2007 at a function at the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi. It is a completely free and open platform, for the dissemination of information and knowledge and discussion and debate on water issues.  

The Water Portal contains a rich storehouse of experiential knowledge from practitioners in the field. This consists of case studies, movies, slideshows and courses based on the work done by partner organisations on various domains of water eg. groundwater, rainwater harvesting, water quality, urban water.

The Water Portal seeks to invest significant resources in the creation of innovative resources or applications that apply recent advances in technology to specific water problems. An example is the Meteorological Data application that provides 11 climate parameters (including rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration) for all parts of the country for the past 100 years. This has been mapped onto a GIS platform that makes it very easy to use for anyone. Another application is the creation of multi-media e-learning courses on watersheds, groundwater, fluoride mitigation etc.

The Water Portal has always felt the necessity of offline dissemination to reach a wider audience. To this end we are using CDs, radio programming, media outreach and other channels.

The Portal is now seeking to broaden its audience by adding content that is of value to a wider group of people including citizens, students and teachers, corporates and media. Work is also being planned on significantly increasing the content available in Indian languages.

The Water Portal is envisioned to be a collaborative and partnership-driven effort. The content on the Portal is from different organisations who have documented their efforts and learnings and contributed this material to the Portal for wider dissemination. The Portal seeks to create a core group of people who see the value in such an effort and who will invest their time and effort in making the Portal a valuable and vibrant site. The long-term vision is that the Portal has multiple stakeholders, including financially, and is supported by the broader water community.