• Vaneshree Maharaj

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) has a legislative mandate for the acquisition, archiving, processing, and dissemination of satellite imagery, to enable the development of data and information products for the use and benefit of the public sector and the Earth observation community. SANSA strives to develop innovative solutions in a form of earth observation data to assist authorities in their decision-making processes.

In the process of creating solutions to monitor water resources in South Africa, SANSA has renewed the agreement with two companies from the private sector, GeoTerraImage and Ekosource Insight to provide satellite derived information to government entities for the purpose of water resource management and monitoring through the National Water Quantity Information Service also known as the “Mzansi Amanzi” tool.

The Mzansi Amanzi tool uses Sentinel 1 and 2 satellite data to calculate surface water area, from which dam water volume levels across South Africa are modelled on a monthly basis, supporting a wide range of water resource managers and their information needs, such as estimating available water supply volume in a particular area. The monthly data gives volume and surface area histories of individual dams dating back to 2016  including volume and surface area summaries per catenary catchment.

The Mzansi Amanzi monthly water datasets (2016 – current) distributed by SANSA are supplied in GIS compatible raster and vector file formats and are available for each new assessment month by the 15^th day of the following month i.e., March 2023 data will be available by 15^th April 2023.

This monthly water resource monitoring information is freely available to all South African government departments and state entities and can be also used by consultants working on projects for such entities.

Information on data access can be obtained through SANSA’s customer services by emailing SANSA Earth Observation at customers-eo@sansa.org.za or by visiting the portal https://www.water-southafrica.co.za/