Digitalization and Hydroinformatics

Technological developments have been very significant in recent decades. Consider the following. Until 1900, human knowledge used to double every century. At the end of 2nd World War, doubling time declined to 25 years. By 2013, it was 13 months and soon it will be 12 hours. Nearly 90% of data in the world were generated during last 2 years. In 1980, storage costs per gigabyte of data were over $1 million. Now it is a fraction of 1 cent. Computing capacities have increased exponentially in recent years and costs have declined exponentially. Water sector generally has not taken advantage of these major developments. Dadu River Hydropower Authority is at the forefront of digitalization and bigdata analytics compared to any other institution by at least 10 years. Between 2014 and 2021, its installed capacity more than doubled, total employment declined by 15%, productivity increased by 75% and profit by 35%. Digitalization can significantly improve water management.

By Asit K. Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada, 2023. Article published in River, Volume 2, Issue 1, pages 1-4. DOI: 10.1002/rvr2.37.

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