At the India Water Portal, we are blessed with some very keen and enthusiastic volunteers. Two of our star volunteers are Sharada Ramadass from Bangalore, Karnataka and Gautam Dihora from Bhavnagar, Gujarat. They have helped us in creating a new volunteer project that we need help with, from everyone.
Central Groundwater Board (CGWB) publishes district-wise groundwater profiles for all of India, which contain useful data on groundwater availability, aquifer types, and valuable descriptions of wells. It also provides data on water quality, water levels and how much land is irrigated by groundwater. All this information is in text and in .PDF format. The data for Karnataka can be accessed from this link.
While we commend CGWB for putting this information out there for the public, there are a lot of issues with these profiles.
Sharada Ramadass has worked on Bagalkote district and Gautam has worked on Bidar district profile of Karnataka. The volunteer work was split in 3
phases.
The work of these two volunteers can be seen on this page.
We acknowledge and appreciate their time and effort to make data more usable and also to demystify the information, so that more people can understand their groundwater situation. We look forward to working with them and others in future too.
Now we need to continue the work so we can get the information for all of India in useable formats. If you have some time in the next few weeks, please take a moment to help make groundwater data more accessible for everyone.
If you have half an hour this week, please go to our volunteer page and get started on a profile. This work will help us all understand the value of the water we use everyday.