International Commission on Surface Water

1. Activities 1999-2001

The first bureau meeting took place at the IUGG 99 General Assembly at Birmingham University, 28 July 1999. There, the vision of the coming years was discussed. ICSW will try to focus on the developing countries and encourage them to work within IAHS, since they lack attentiveness. ICSW will try to get funds for research projects and funds for attending meetings.

ICSW has supported several scientific meetings:

• International Symposium on Integrated Water Resources Management
  (9-12 April 2000, Davis, California, USA)
  
  
• The Extremes of the Extremes
  an International Conference on Extraordinary Floods (17-19 July 2000 Reykjavik, Iceland)
  
  
• International Symposium in Flood Defence
  (20-23 September 2000, University of Kassel, Germany)
  Dr. Volker Ashauer
  
  
• ERB-2000 Monitoring and Modelling Catchment Water Quantity and Quality
  (27-29 September 2000, Gent, Belgium)
  
  
• Workshop on Runoff Generation
  (9-12 October 2000, University of Freiburg, Germany)
  
  
• European Conference an Advances in Flood Research
  (1-3 November 2000, Potsdam, Germany)
  
  
• FRIEND/AMHY (FRIEND-Alpine and Mediterranean Hydrology) (Seminar)
  (11-13 October 2000, Montpellier, France)
  
  
• European Geophysical Society Workshop: Modelling and Managing Hydrological Droughts
  (26-30 March 2001, Nice, France)
  
  
• A New Hydrology for a Thirsty Planet
  (18-27 July 2001, Maastricht, The Netherlands)
  
  
  

ICSW has established a mailing list to ease communication with and dissemination of information to the hydrological community interested in surface water-related topics. ICSW has established its own web site: http://www.hydrology.uni-freiburg.de/icsw/, which will help to transmit the work of the commission to a wide scientific audience. The second bureau meeting was held in Stockholm on 13 September 2000 at the Swedish natural Science Research Council.

2. Planned Activities 2001-2003

To approach IAHS to design a brochure which would be of help to present IAHS. It would make IAHS more attractive to the scientific community. Funding will be further discussed for forthcoming workshops and conferences.

ICSW will support the following scientific meetings:

• Fifth International Symposium on Hydrologic Applications of Weather Radar-Radar Hydrology
  (19-22 November 2001, Kyoto, Japan)
  
  
• Symposium or workshop on "Integrated Water Resources Management"
  (Cape Town, 2002)
  
  
• FRIEND 2002: Forth International Conference on FRIEND - Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice
  (18-22 March 2002, Cape Town, South Africa)
  
  
• Conference on "Hydrology in the Mediterranean and Semiarid Regions"
  (7-10 April 2003, Montpellier, France)
  
  
• Flood and Drought Forecasting with Reference to Global Change (workshop)
  (2003, IUGG, Sapporo, Japan)
  
  

3. Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data (FRIEND)

Status Report on the FRIEND Project

1. Introduction

The FRIEND (Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data) research programme is an international collaborative study in regional hydrology. It is a major contribution (Project 1.1) to the fifth International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO. Its primary aim is to develop, through a mutual exchange of data, knowledge and techniques, a better understanding of hydrological variability and similarity across time and space. This will advance knowledge of hydrological processes and flow regimes and improve practical design methods and techniques for analysing scenarios for environmental change. Capacity building, especially in developing countries, is an important part of the project.

FRIEND research is conducted at a regional level and is not confined by national boundaries. This has been achieved by developing international hydrological data bases of time series and spatial data and by establishing international project groups which exchange models and techniques and apply a common approach to the analysis of data over different hydrological regions.

Since its inception in Northern Europe in 1985 the project has grown considerably and now involves about 100 countries world-wide. To date, eight regional FRIEND groups (see Figure 1) have been established in Northern Europe, the Alpine and Mediterranean region (AMHY), Southern Africa, Nile Basin, West and Central Africa (AOC), the Hindu-Kush Himalayan region (HKH), Asian-Pacific region and the Mesoamerican and Caribbean region (AMIGO). Each is run independently with support provided by the FRIEND Intergroup Coordination Committee (FIGCC) which meets biannually. The next meeting will be in Maastricht, Netherlands in July 2001 in association with the 6th Scientific Assembly of IAHS.

2. Recent FRIEND activities worldwide

This last few years has been a period of consolidation for FRIEND, with real progress being made by many regional projects. During this time FRIEND has continued to play a key role within the fifth International Hydrological Programme (IHP-V). Its influence looks set to expand further in IHP -VI, from 2002 until 2007, with FRIEND being elevated to the status of a "cross- cutting" programme with linkages to many themes and focal areas. It is hoped that IHP-VI will see the continued expansion of FRIEND worldwide, and new projects in Central Asia, USA, South and Central America and the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas are currently under consideration.

Recent developments of note include the success of relatively new FRIEND projects, such as Hindu-Kush Himalayan FRIEND, Asian Pacific and Mesoamerican and Caribbean FRIEND, in moving from the planning to implementation stage, with project groups being established and a busy schedule of collaborative meetings and training courses organised (see Table 2). Six project groups are now operational within HKH FRIEND including a snow and glacial hydrology group. HKH FRIEND has benefited enormously from close links with NE FRIEND, GRDC and the German IHP/OHP Committee, who have provided both funding and training opportunities. Likewise, Mesoamerican and Caribbean FRIEND/AMIGO and Asian Pacific FRIEND are now actively implementing their science plans with established and active project groups. Both are developing internet accessible databases. The benefits of collaboration are already evident in Asian Pacific FRIEND with the organisation of a number of workshops, attended by representatives from across this wide geographic region. These included a highly successful workshop on the Mekong River Basin held in Bangkok, Thailand in January 2000, at which a range of modelling studies were presented and many problems related to the Mekong river raised and tackled. The third volume of the Catalogue of Rivers was published in 2000, which together with volumes 1 and 2, provides detailed hydrological information from 69 catchments in 13 countries.

Research within African FRIEND projects, namely Southern Africa, West and Central Africa and Nile FRIEND, has been boosted by the location of the fourth international FRIEND Conference in Cape Town, South Africa from 18-22 March, 2002. This has encouraged an unprecedented number of African hydrologists to submit extended abstracts to the conference. Other recent developments include the dissemination of a spatial data CD-ROM to all hydrological agencies in South Africa. This will be supported by future training courses on Geographical Information Systems. Progress within Nile FRIEND has in the past been hampered by problems over data sharing and a lack of funding. These have now largely been resolved, and major funding for the next three years, agreed by the Belgian Government of Flanders, should give new impetus to the project and enable progress to be made.

A more detailed review of developments within each regional project is outlined below and recent FRIEND meetings summarised in Table 1.

Northern European FRIEND (NE FRIEND), initiated in 1985, now includes participants from over 50 different organisations in 24 countries including Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the UK.

The extension of NE FRIEND into eastern Europe, facilitated by funding from INTAS, and the establishment of a regional datacentre in St Petersburg, Russia has led to much expansion in data held on the European Water Archive. The archive currently contains about 140,000 station years of gauged daily flow data distributed as follows:

Table 1 Summary of gauged daily flow data (GDF) on the FRIEND European Water Archive

Country	Total numbers of stations	GDF Stns	%GDF Stns	Earliest Record	Latest Record	Station years (GDF)	Average record length	Max record length
Austria	139	139	100	1922	1996	4520	33	75
Belarus	40	33	83	1919	1995	1383	42	77
Belgium	110	75	68	1929	1997	837	11	54
Bulgaria	3	3	100	1978	1986	27	9	9
Czech Republic	34	27	79	1887	1993	1486	54	104
Denmark	43	35	81	1917	1997	2115	60	81
Finland	71	68	96	1847	1997	3674	54	144
France	1476	1333	90	1863	1992	29734	22	128
Germany	790	698	88	1884	1998	26600	38	113
Greece	2	2	100	1978	1980	6	3	3
Hungary	26	25	96	1935	1996	825	33	62
Iceland	8	8	100	1932	1994	386	48	61
Ireland	130	77	59	1940	1997	1908	25	57
Italy	252	252	100	1925	1990	3969	16	66
Luxembourg	2	0	0
Netherlands	37	32	86	1901	1994	694	22	93
Norway	214	205	96	1871	1999	7894	39	127
Poland	61	29	48	1955	1992	738	25	36
Portugal	73	73	100	1920	1994	1092	15	71
Romania	35	33	94	1838	1990	1155	35	153
Russia	217	199	92	1928	1995	8674	44	63
Slovakia	23	23	100	1930	1992	1441	63	63
Slovenia	12	12	100	1945	1990	300	25	45
Spain	45	45	100	1942	1995	1582	35	54
Sweden	71	66	93	1907	1992	2583	39	85
Switzerland	132	75	57	1904	1992	2775	37	82
Turkey	12	12	100	1958	1991	201	17	33
UK	1112	1015	91	1879	1999	30984	31	121
Ukraine	69	58	84	1960	1990	1798	31	31
Yugoslavia	5	5	100	1978	1990	63	13	13
Summary	5244	4657		1847	1999	139426	30	153

A wide range of spatial data is also held on a GIS ARC/INFO database. For further details and a meta-data catalogue please contact the Database Coordinator Mr Gwyn Rees at CEH, Wallingford mailto:g.rees@ceh.ac.uk.

All project groups are actively engaged in research and all hold annual collaborative meetings. These have in the last year often been linked to conferences and seminars at which researchers can present their work to a wider audience. For instance, researchers working on large scale variations (Project 3) met in March 2001 at the European Geophysical Association Assembly, the Floods group met at a European conference on floods research in Potsdam, Germany in November 2000, while project group 5 ( Catchment biogeochemical and hydrological processes ) organised a joint conference with ERB (Euromediterranean Network of Experimental and Representative Basins) in Ghent, Belgium in September 2000. Members of the low flow group have been actively involved in the EU funded ARIDE project (Regional Assessment of Drought in Europe), and a sub group of East European low flow researchers has been formed. A textbook on Low Flows is currently under preparation by members of the Low Flows group.
Further information is available on http:/www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/www/research/iresearch.html

Alpine and Mediterranean FRIEND (AMHY) was established in 1991 to coordinate hydrological research in the Alpine and Mediterranean regions of southern Europe and North-west Africa. It now involves the active participation of 17 countries, including several in the south Mediterranean and North Africa. In 1999 coordination of the project passed from Dr Guy Oberlin a t CEMAGREF to Dr Eric Servat, Director of IRD in Montpellier, France. The AMHY database is now maintained from this site. Research is organised into nine project groups including such topics exclusive to AMHY as integrated water resources management, very long times series and erosion and solid transport. The annual Steering Committee meeting was held in Montpellier, France in October 2000 in association with an international workshop on "Hydrology of the Mediterranean Regions".
Further information is available on http://www.mpl.ird.fr/amhy/

Asian-Pacific FRIEND was launched officially in 1997 and provides a framework for hydrological research over a wide geographic area of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Collaborating countries include China, R. Korea, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand. A key factor in the evolution of the project has been the publication of three volumes of the Catalogue of Rivers for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, presenting detailed information for 69 rivers from 13 countries. A science plan , published by UNESCO in 1999, brings together over 50 research proposals into five main research themes, with a current particular focus on the establishment of the Asian Pacific Water Archive and flood and low flow research. The archive is internet based with a central node at the Regional Humid Tropics Hydrology and Water Resources Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with links to other centres in Japan and Australia. This archive presently includes available hydrometeorological and water resources information for Asian Pacific FRIEND and other IHP related activities in the region. A number of FRIEND workshops have been organised on such topics as floods and droughts in the 1990's and Mekong Basin Studies.
Further information is available on http://titan2.cee.yamanashi.ac.jp/FRIEND/

Mesoamerican and Caribbean FRIEND (AMIGO) the most recent FRIEND project, brings together 28 #countries and administrative dependencies of the Mesoamerican and Caribbean regions. It provides a common theme to previously disparate research across this large number of small islands and Mesoamerican area. Since it was established in December 1999, the project has made good progress. The Steering Committee last met in December 1999 in Mexico and, since then, there have been inaugural meetings of the working groups on home page and database, eco-hydrology, maximum and minimum hydrological phenomena respectively.

Hindu-Kush Himalayan FRIEND, established in 1996, involves the active participation of eight countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The project has in recent years made real progress with the establishment of a regional hydrological data centre at ICIMOD, Kathmandu, creation of six working groups for research into floods, low flows, rainfall runoff, water quality, snow and glaciers and database, organisation of training courses and exchange visits by scientists. A workshop on surface/river water quality will be held in Islamabad in May 2001 and a joint FRIEND/ICSI (International Commission for Snow and Ice) workshop on glacier mass balance measurement techniques was held in March 2001 in Pokhara, Nepal. The Second HKH FRIEND Steering Committee meeting took place in Kathmandu, Nepal in April 2000, and inaugural meetings of five project groups were held during 1999 and 2000.

Nile FRIEND
This project, launched in 1996, is important for encouraging communication, cooperation and data exchange between the nine countries of the Nile Basin namely Burundi, Egypt, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Zaire. It is hoped that cooperation agreements, developed as a result of FRIEND, will lead to long term improvements in the management of this major river basin. The Steering Committee last met in Cairo in August 2000. New funding of $900,00 from the Belgian Government of Flanders should enable real progress to be made towards the key priorities of creating a regional database and developing training and capacity building in the region.

Southern Africa FRIEND
This project, initiated in 1991 involves the active participation of twelve countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Mauritius. Now in its second phase, the project is focussing on water resource issues such as drought assessment and climate variability, regional water resources and river flow modelling and lake water-balance studies. Recent activities include the dissemination of a spatial data CD-ROM to all hydrological agencies, a low flow training course organised by CEH Wallingford in Malawi, and organisation of the FRIEND conference in Cape Town. The sixth Steering Committee meeting was held in Blantyre, Malawi in November 2000.

West and Central African FRIEND (AOC)
This project launched in Abijdan, Côte d'Ivoire in 1994 involves fifteen countries in West and Central Africa, including Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa, Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Côte- d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. Now in its second phase, research is now focussing on the variability of water resources, modelling of hydrological processes, low flows and sediment transport. A key achievement has been the establishment of the regional database (BADOIE), currently located at the regional coordination centre at AGRHYMET in Niamey, Niger. There are plans to make it available on the internet by the end of 2001. The Steering Committee last met in Niamey, Niger in June 2000.
Further information is available on http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~hhgg/aoc/friendaoc.htm

Contact details of international FRIEND coordinators are included as Annex 1.

FRIEND 2002 Conference
Preparations are well advanced for the fourth international FRIEND Conference (convened jointly by UNESCO/ National Committee of South Africa, Southern Africa FRIEND, IAHS and WMO) to be held in Cape Town, South Africa from 18-22 March 2002. The Conference will focus on bridging the gap between knowledge, research and practical applications, with paper and poster presentations on the following themes: hydrological data; managing hydrological risk; water scarcity, over-exploitation and poverty reduction; sustaining water related ecosystems and continental hydrology. Extended abstracts have been submitted, and accepted abstracts selected. A second circular will be distributed in July. Further information is available at http://www.ru.ac.za/institutes/iwr or from the Conference Secretariat mailto:Juanita@iwr.ru.ac.za In addition to conference proceedings published in the IAHS Red Book series, a FRIEND Report presenting a synthesis of FRIEND activities from 1998-2002 will be available. All regional FRIEND projects will contribute to the report.

Links with other international programmes
FRIEND continues to maintain links with several global scale initiatives such as GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment), WHYCOS (World Hydrological Cycle Observing System) and GEMS/Water (Global Environment Monitoring System). Three on-going WHYCOS projects (MED-HYCOS, SADC-HYCOS, and AOC-HYCOS) coincide geographically with regional FRIEND projects and involve organisations which are also active in FRIEND. Within IHP-VI possibilities for collaborative research between these projects and the data centres they use, for example, the GRDC (Global Runoff Data Centre) and the GPCC (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre), and FRIEND will be sought.

There is also the potential for FRIEND to develop close links with a new global initiative launched in November 1999, entitled Hydrology for Environment, Life and Policy (HELP), which aims to provide the scientific basis for improved land and water management through a global network of experimental basins. Scope also exists for closer links between FRIEND and the Global Water Partnership, which FRIEND formally joined in October 2000. for FRIEND to develop close links with a new global initiative launched in November 1999, entitled Hydrology for Environment, Life and Policy (HELP), which aims to provide the scientific basis for improved land and water management through a global network of experimental basins. Scope also exists for closer links between FRIEND and the Global Water Partnership, which FRIEND formally joined in October 2000.

FRIEND related research
A number of externally funded research projects have arisen directly from FRIEND. In the HKH region, the recently completed three year REFRESHA project, funded by DFID in the UK, has led to the development of low flow estimation methods for ungauged catchments in the Himachel Pradesh region of India and Nepal. These can be applied both for assessing the potential for small scale hydropower development and water resource assessment. CEH Wallingford have also been successful in securing DFID funding for a new three year study on snow and glacier aspects of water resource management in the Himalayas (SAGARMATHA) which began in May 2001. In Europe, a three year study assessing the regional impact of drought in Europe has just been completed and a final report published. This project, initiated by members of the NE FRIEND low flow group, included a pilot study on real time monitoring of drought incorporating new drought visualisation techniques.

Figure 1 Location of FRIEND projects worldwide

Table 2 Recent (2000-2003) and forthcoming FRIEND meetings

Region	Event	Venue	Date
All	Fourth Internatrional FRIEND Conference	Cape Town, South Africa	18-22 March 2002
	FRIEND Intergroup Coordinating Committee (FIGCC)	Cape Town South Africa	17 March 2002
	FRIEND Intergroup Coodinating Committee (FIGCC)	Maastricht, Netherlands	24 July 2001
NE FRIEND	Project 2: Low Flows	Cape Town South Africa	18 March 2002
	Steering Committee Meeting No. 8	Cape Town South Africa	18 March 2002
	Steering Committee Meeting No. 7	Stockholm Sweden	14-15 September 2001
		Freiburg Germany	20-23 June 2001
		Warsaw Poland	22-28 May 2001
	Steering Committee Meeting No.7	Stockholm, Sweden	14-15 Sept. 2001
	Project 2: Low Flows Group	Watsaw, Poland Freiburg,Germany	22-28 May 2000 20-23 June 2001
	Project 3: Large Scale Variation in Hydrologic Characteristics	Nice, France	26-30 March 2001
	Project 4: Floods	Potsdam, Germany	4 November 2000
	Project 5: Catchment Hydrological and Biogeochemical Processes in Changing Environment	Ghent, Belgium Cracow, Poland	26 Sept. 2000 Sept. 2001
AMHY	Steering Committee meeting and international conference	Montpellier, France	10 October 2000
HKH FRIEND	River water quality group training workshop	Islamabad, Pakistan	21-27 May 2001
	Snow and glacier group/ICSI workshop on glacial mass balance	Kathmandu, Nepal	20-24 March 2001
	2nd Steering Committee meeting	Kathmandu, Nepal	11-13 April 2000
	Inception meeting of rainfall-runoff modelling group	Kathmandu, Nepal	10 April 2000
	Inception meeting and workshop of floods group	Kathmandu, Nepal	14 April 2000
	Inception meeting of river water quality group	Kathmandu, Nepal	14 April 2000
Southern Africa	6th Steering Committee meeting Low flows training course	Blantyre, Malawi Lilongwe, Malawi	13-14 November 2001 29 Jan - 2 Feb 2001
Nile	Coordinators meeting 4th Steering Committee meeting	Cairo, Egypt Cairo, Egypt	April 2000 August 2000
AOC	Steering Committee meeting	Niamey, Niger	June 2000
Asian Pacific	Workshop on Mekong Basin Studies	Bangkok, Thailand	24-26 January 2000
Mesoamerican and Caribbean	Meeting of working group on minimum hydrological phenomena Meeting of working group on homepage and database	Costa Rica	Nov 31- 3 Dec 2000 6-9 December 2000

Relevant international meetings

Event	Venue	Date
Sixth IAHS General Assembly: A New Hydrology for a Thirsty Planet	Maastricht, Netherlands	18-27 July 2001
International conference: Hydrological Challenges in Transboundary Water Resources	Koblenz, Germany	25-27 September 2001
ERB 2002 Conference: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Experimental Catchment Hydrology Monitoring and Research	Low Tatra Mts, Slovakia	September 2002
International conference: Hydrology in the Mediterranean and Semi-arid lands	Montpellier, France	1-4 April 2003

Annex 1 Contact details for international FRIEND coordinators

Northern European FRIEND Dr A Gustard Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (former Institute of Hydrology) Wallingford, Oxon, OX10 8BB United Kingdom Tel/Fax: +44 1491 838800 / +44 1491 692424 E-mail:agu@ceh.ac.uk WWW:http://www.nwl.ac.uk/ih/friend	Hindu Kush-Himalayan FRIEND Prof S R Chalise International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) P O Box 3226 Kathmandu Nepal Tel/Fax: +977 1 525 313 / +977 1 524 509 Email:chalise@icimod.org.np
Alpine and Mediterranean Hydrology FRIEND Dr E Servat Directeur de Recherches Centre IRD, Hydrologie B.P. 5045 34032 Montpellier Cedex France Tel/Fax: +33 4 67 149 020 / +33 4 67 149 010 Email:Eric.Servat@mpl.ird.fr WWW: http://www.mpl.ird.fr/amhy	Western and Central Africa FRIEND Dr A Amani AGRHYMET Hydrologue, PMI/GRN BP 11011 Niamey Niger Tel/Fax: +227 73 31 16/ +227 73 24 35 Email:amani@sahel.agrhymet.ne
Southern Africa FRIEND Dr S Mkhandi University of Dar es Salaam PO Box 35131 Dar es Salaam Tanzania Tel/Fax: +255 22 2410029 Email:mkhandi@wrep.udsm.ac.tz	Asian Pacific FRIEND Prof K Takeuchi Yamanashi University Takeda 4 Kofu 400-8511 Japan Tel/Fax: +81 552 20 8603 / +81 552 53 4915 Email:takeuchi@mail.yamanashi.ac.jp
Nile FRIEND Prof M S M Farid Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI) NWRC Building El Kanater El Khairiya Post Code 13621 Egypt Tel/Fax: +202 218 8787 / +202 218 4344 Email:mailto:ruwrri@rusys.EG.net	Mesoamerican and Caribbean FRIEND/AMIGO Dr E O Planos Gutierrez Instituto de Meteorologia Loma de Casablanca Municipio Regla CP 11700, La Habana Cuba Tel/Fax: +537 570711 / +537 338010 Email:planos@met.inf.cu

4. IAHS Strategy

ICSW Science Agenda

IAHS should be focused on its two strengths. One is to organize scientific workshops and conferences, and the second is that it should publish high quality journals and conference proceedings. Through these two mechanisms it can influence the national and international science agenda.

However, IAHS should not develop a science programme or science projects except where there is a specific targeted initiative, which IAHS has the resources to deliver. The view of ICSW is that there are a large and ever increasing number of strategic science initiatives at the project level, at the section or university department level, at a national level, at a funding level, e.g. EU, and at the international level, GEWEX, IHP, WCP, etc. IAHS should not develop another international research programme, which duplicates these initiatives. ICSW strategy should influence the science agenda through the organization of or contribution to workshops, conferences and special issues of journals. Our agenda would be more targeted if we could decide a six years programme for our key activities. We could then use our energies to organize activities for a positive outcome rather than writing strategy papers, which may not be followed up.

Our science agenda is thus a series of activities but the action plan can only be developed after discussion at Maastricht. Key ICSW initiatives would include the following:

• Assessment of water resources at a range of spatial and temporal scales
  
  
• Forecasting extreme events at a range of time and space scales
  
  
• Interaction between hydrology, instream ecology and wetland functions including socio-economic aspects.
  
  
• Interaction between surface and groundwater systems.
  
  
• Transferring research to the user, particularly in developing countries
  
  
• Capacity building and dissemination of research
  
  

The primary initiative is therefore inter-disciplinary research and this raises the question of our commission structure.