The Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) Unit (RS GIS Unit) of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), is a centralized facility for all spatial data related activities of IWMI at the headquarters in Sri Lanka and Regional Offices located in different parts of the world.

Currently, the RS GIS Unit holds 3 terabytes of data. Although the emphasis is on IWMI benchmark river basins, large volumes of data are also available at National, Regional, and Global levels. These data are catalogued, streamlined, and released to the public through the IWMI Data Storehouse Pathway (DSP). Much of the river basin and other datasets are composed as single mega files of hundreds or sometimes thousands of bands consisting of continuous streams of 8-day or monthly time series data in several wavebands and/or indices.

Large volumes of multi-temporal data from multiple satellite sensors are used in several IWMI research projects. These projects include: (a) Global Irrigated Area Mapping (GIAM) at global to local scales, (b) the Wetland project in the Limpopo river basin of four Southern African Nations, (c) the Krishna river basin project in India, (d) the Indo-Gangetic river basin project in India and Pakistan, (e) the Drought Assessment and Mitigation project in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India, and (f) the bio-diversity project in Sri Lanka.

More information on the RS GIS Unit and its activities can be found in several areas of this web site. To start: click here.

Roles of the RS GIS Unit

The primary roles of the RS/GIS Unit are to:

• Streamline all RS/GIS data of IWMI,
  
  
• Participate in IWMI projects and themes,
  
  
• Provide services to IWMI researchers,
  
  
• Conduct workshops,
  
  
• Build capacity, and
  
  
• Develop innovative research applications using RS/GIS tools.