An online portal for water quality data for all inland and coastal waters worldwide gives government institutions, environmental authorities, the water industry, universities, and all interested access to their data. With this, EOMAP aims to enable better-informed decisions to be made with regard to sustainable water management. The satellite-derived data provide information on inland waters, rivers, and lakes up to around one hectare in size. Parameters such as turbidity, chlorophyll content, water temperature, and cyanobacteria indicators give a good idea of water quality.
EOMAP was founded in 2006 as a spin-off from the DLR Remote Sensing Technology Institute. The portal is part of the International Initiative on Water Quality (IIWQ) under UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP).
Global water cycles are changing significantly as a result of climate change and human activity. The portal is a contribution to improved global water quality information and, in addition, promotes science- and data-based decision-making on water quality. The portal is seen as a valuable tool to obtain water quality information especially in remote areas and in developing regions such as in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Small Island Developing States, where there is a lack of water quality monitoring networks and laboratory capacity. It will also help countries identify the most pressing water quality problems such as pollution hotspots.
- IIWQ World Water Quality Information and Capacity Building Portal
- EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG, Seefeld, Germany
- German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), Germany
