The project aims to develop a comprehensive water accounting system for the Indus Basin and the provinces of Punjab and Sindh; thereby strengthening Pakistan's capacity to assess water resources, demands, and uses across multiple scales and sectors. In collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and under the Green Climate Fund-financed project "Transforming the Indus Basin with Climate Resilient Agriculture and Water Management," FutureWater will design and build a Water Accounting (WA) system, leveraging remote sensing data, that generates historical and near-real-time information on water availability, storage, outflow, demand, and use. The system will be developed for the agriculture, household, industry, and environment sectors, equipping federal and provincial stakeholders with the tools and training needed to manage water resources under increasing climate pressure.
As one of the most climate-vulnerable countries and heavily dependent on the Indus River system for agriculture, Pakistan faces growing risks from rising temperatures, shifting precipitation, and increasing seasonal variability in snow and glacier melt. Modelling of climate change scenarios indicates that, under a business-as-usual pathway, these pressures will pose serious threats to farmer livelihoods and the wider agricultural sector. Reliable, transparent, and sector-disaggregated information on where water comes from, how it is stored, and how it is consumed is essential for shifting the basin toward a more resilient and sustainable water management pathway.
With support from FAO, the project will develop a water accounting system that maximizes the use of satellite remote sensing, complemented by in-situ data for inputs and validation. The work covers four key outputs:
- Critically reviewing existing draft water accounting reports and training materials produced by stakeholders, identifying gaps in methodology and datasets
- Developing a holistic WA methodology that accounts for available water resources, changes in storage, outflows, water use, and demand across agricultural, industrial, domestic, and environmental sectors
- Building a calibrated and validated water accounting system of models and codes, based on free and open-source software, capable of generating water accounting results for the Indus Basin and two provinces
- Producing water accounting reports for the Indus Basin, Punjab, and Sindh, including historical supply-demand gaps, water balances, and spatial distribution maps.
To ensure the system is sustainable and locally owned, FutureWater will deliver comprehensive hands-on training to government officials, enabling them not only to run the models but also to understand the underlying theory and modify the system in the future. By integrating advanced hydrological modelling, energy-based evapotranspiration estimation, and the latest land use classification, the resulting water accounting system will provide the Government of Pakistan with a powerful, replicable tool to support climate-resilient agriculture and water management across the Indus Basin.
