Canada is water rich. It contains 7% of the world’s renewable freshwater. Considering the central importance of water to Canada’s economy and the increasing pressures on our water systems, better water management is crucial for Canada’s current and future economic and environmental security.
Following precipitation, evapotranspiration (ET) is the second largest component of hydrologic systems and is the primary determinant of irrigation water requirements. Despite the central importance of ET as a data input for water management, access to ET data has traditionally been limited and expensive, especially in Canada. The main goal of this project was to develop a software framework that can be used by a variety of stakeholders to develop, visualize, and easily integrate field-scale historical and operational Evapotranspiration (ET) and Cumulative Use (CU) estimates for decision-support over relevant time periods and areas of interest.
Thanks to the generous support of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), this project successfully developed a system that can process and store Canada scale ET data and a method for users to generate spatial summaries of ET values in order to better understand the hydrological cycle at both local and national levels. This project started at a commercial readiness level of ARL 3.
Through support from the CSA this project was brought to an ARL 4. Future work can now be undertaken to explore various commercial applications for this technology for water reporting, sustainable water accounting, and opportunities for sustainable finance both in Canada and internationally.