A Water Related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta: Experiences of the German-Vietnamese WISDOM Project

Abstract

This chapter presents the evolvement of an environmental information system, built for the Mekong Delta, in the context of the German-Vietnamese research project WISDOM (Water related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta). The WISDOM project (2007–2014) belonged to a group of Integrated Water Resources Management, IWRM, projects, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Science, BMBF, on the German side, and the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology, MOST, on the Vietnamese side. Goal of the multi-disciplinary project has been to contribute to numerous knowledge gaps existing for the Mekong Delta. Applied research questions from the fields of hydrology, hydro-morphology, chemistry, geography, ecology, biology, socio-economy, as well as administration and law were addressed by a large group of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers active in the project. One goal and also one—but not the—central element of the project has been the design of a water related information system, which can serve as a planning aid for decision makers and stakeholders in the delta. At the same time the freely and online available, bilingual (English and Vietnamese) WISDOM Information System, serves as a central project hub, which ensures that the majority of project findings that come in the form of geodata, in situ measurement collections, maps, statistics, reports, or scientific publications is available to the public. In this paper, geographic background and challenges of the focus area, project set-up, Information System design, components realized, training measures undertaken, as well as general experiences when realizing large projects in emerging countries are elucidated and discussed.