Information, Water, and Conflict: Exploring the Linkages in the Middle East: Fid-Bau Portal

Information, Water, and Conflict: Exploring the Linkages in the Middle East

Naff, Thomas

Solutions to water-related problems must begin and end with good information (“information” as used herein includes raw and processed data). The gathering of information, its quality, comparability. and management, who controls and distributes it, how it is used, by whom, and toward what ends are potent determinants of the well-being of individuals and nations. Flowing water carries within itself its own information, and because watercourses tend to be very dynamic systems, wafer data are consequently almost always in one degree or another estimates, extrapolations, and, sometimes, even speculation. Such data are generated from a wide variety of measurements and technologies; the degree of accuracy is determined by an equally wide compass o/factors.

Using the Middle East as an example, this study analyzes these issues, the importance of historical and current data, information and data collection technologies, distributed data networks and GIS, the relationship between information and conflict, and argues the necessity for establishing a regional nexus of distributed water information systems, offering a specific model based on new relational software.