Communication

GIS Based Communication Platform for the Sustainable Management of Transboundary Water Resources in Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Kaliningrad Region (Russia)

Problem Description / Relevance to Water Security: 

Pregolya and the Neman rivers are heavily affected by anthropogenic pressures in all four countries. The lack of basin wide information on pressures and current ecological and chemical status of water bodies is an important issue for the sustainable management in the region. Due to the political situation in the region the sustainable transboundary management of river basins was limited. So far the planning of water resources was usually based only on national data.

ICT Application / Outcome: 

A GIS database consisting of 12 transboundary GIS layers (Table 1) and more than 100 attribute fields was created. The database content is based on national information. The information for different countries was obtained from various sources: official GIS maps, official statistical data, digitized paper maps, reports, literature, etc. The long list of sources meant that the detail level of the map was diverse. The data harmonization was necessary to provide the unified basin wide information layers.