Accra, Oct. 24, GNA - A three-day workshop for water security and governance opened in Accra on Friday with a call on participants to make their recommendations user-friendly to avoid it being left on shelves to gather dust.

The pre-conference workshop for the first Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) would focus on human capacity building and provide the latest update on the implementation of the GEOSS information infrastructure.

The workshop, which has attracted scientists and academia around the continent, would pay special attention to how to develop operational end-user applications and actively work with end-users for informed decision making for water security and governance. Mrs Cecila Daapah, Minister of State, Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, said the increasing stress on Africa's freshwater resources was as result of human causes such as rapid population growth, pollution from pesticides and fertilizers and dumping of industrial wastes.

She therefore stressed the need to develop strategies for an effective earth observation-based assessment and monitoring systems for the sustainable and integrated management of water resources in Africa. Mrs Daapah suggested an integrated water resource management to engage professionals in the water sector as well as policy makers to adapt the use of geo-information products for monitoring, assessing and protection of water resources. The emphasis of GEOSS is on societal benefits, initially in several key areas, such as disaster, health, energy, water, climate, ecosystems, agriculture and biodiversity. Topics to be discussed include Water Security and Governance Challenges and Issues; Introduction to GEOSS and its Approach to inter-operationability; Open Standards and Open Source based Geo-information Systems (GIS); and Client/Server Development Using Open Source webGIS.