IT system for flow predictions on the Niger River

The Niger Basin Authority is an organisation which regroups the nine countries around the drainage basin of the Niger river. This authority has set up a Sustainable Development Action Plan for water resources and has established a water resource observatory.

The project is part of this programme. It consisted of designing a system of flow predictions. The SIP (IT Prediction  System) permits the prediction of the flows of about 40 hydrological stations carefully identified out of the 150 stations in the hydrometric network of the Niger basin.

Depending on the hydrological regime and the location of the basin, the prediction range goes from several days of floods during the rainy season to more than five months for the flood propagation beginning in the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea in the dry season.

This  decision-making tool helps to predict floods which are often harmful notably in urban areas, to plan irrigation campaigns and to ensure the optimised and co-ordinated management of the existing and future dams in the basin.