TIGER: Earth observation to improve African water resources management

The lack of water relevant information in Africa hinders the deep knowledge of its water cycle at continental and basin levels. This represents a critical drawback for African governments to completely understand the current status of the water resources in the continent, to identify the impacts of climate change in water availability and to set up adaptation and mitigation measurements to cope with future potential threats. To predict the future evolution of the water resources, variations due the complex interaction between climate system, land use and the hydrological cycle first need to be understood: Earth Observation data may play an important role in such process. The TIGER initiative was launched by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) in 2002 to respond to the need for water-related information: this paper summarizes 7 years of achievements and presents the second phase of TIGER.