The Observatory’s role is to support the authorities in developing capacities related to water resources management. Through the creation of a spatial database, the WO focuses on developing tools to control, monitor and manage water resources. Their resulting work is periodically presented to the CLE, enabling them to forecast possible hot spots and granting it a judging base.
The activities concern the monitoring of river and spring flows in the basin, water levels in aquifers, surface and groundwater quality, and are completed by the acquisition of data produced by other services (notably the Meteorological Department).
While the institutional innovations implemented to ensure better management of water resources in the Kou basin are numerous and original, they are also accompanied by research and development work directed by local stakeholders. This work, intended to provide resource managers with the scientific tools that will enable sustainable exploitation of the resources, focuses on two main themes: (i) the inventory of available resources, and (ii) the monitoring and evaluation of the protection and use of these resources.
Effective IWRM depends on a good knowledge of surface and groundwater resources. In the context of the Kou catchment, the acquisition of this knowledge is made difficult by the presence of numerous active hydrological processes (surface runoff, contribution of the water table, rainfall, evapotranspiration, and infiltration). In addition, this basin is marked by the absence of certain data, which is nevertheless essential. Efforts have been made to improve this knowledge in the Kou basin. From the acquisition of data on the state of water resources to the use of this data to estimate the available reserves, forecast their long-term evolution and contribute to the preservation of their quality, significant human and technical resources have been implemented.