The TWIGA project had the best minds working together trying to come up with innovative solutions to problems

We would be happy to share our research work with the general public.

BLOSM: Boron-based Large scale Observation of Soil Moisture

By placing, say, 100 BLOSMs at strategic places along moisture gradients in Africa, such calibration would make the satellite product very reliable and increase trust. They can readily be plugged into TAHMO stations.

The GNSS navigation system for meteorology

Availability of GNSS products will allow for assimilation experiments by the TWIGA partners, in view of a future operational use of these products to enhance the performances of services based on weather predictions.

New sensitivity studies for better heavy rainfall forecasts

Sensitivity experiments and the consequent definition of the most suitable parameterizations are a first step towards NWP model assimilation experiments of water vapor products derived from GNSS and SAR data processing. This step is expected to improve further weather predictions and to impact all the TWIGA services based on them

Fast & robust algorithm for generation of SAR atmospheric water vapor maps

SAR images from the Copernicus Sentinel 1 satellite mission can be used to derive the distribution of atmospheric water vapor over large areas at a very high spatial resolution.

Optimization tool for monitoring networks using satellite rainfall estimates

We adopt this methodology to determine the optimal number of rainfall stations for Ghana and South Africa to achieve predetermined levels of resolution and spatial accuracy of estimated statistical modes of the spatiotemporal rainfall pattern.

VegMon: Smartphone-assisted citizen sensing for vegetation monitoring

The VegMon app is based on the ODK platform. Using an interface, users can enter variables such as crop type through selection choices, photographs, GPS coordinates, as well as dates for planting and harvesting through calendar functions as well as manually measured plant heights and text comments.

Mapping flooding hotspots

Strathmore and TU Delft have developed a non-stationary hydrological model of the Enkare Narok river basin to analyze the causes of flooding Narok town and identify flooding hotspots.

Drones for monitoring crop performance and water requirement

With the Triangle method and using a blended satellite data and drone imagery approach, FutureWater developed a field-scale dryness index and crop evaporation product

Local temperature footprints improve Surface Energy Budget estimation

By combining Distributed Temperature Sensing and drone-based thermal measurements, we are able to get a detailed picture of variability in temperature and energy fluxes at the ground surface

Drones for monitoring crop performance and water requirement

With the Triangle method and using a blended satellite data and drone imagery approach, FutureWater developed a field-scale dryness index and crop evaporation product