BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION FOR
WRI/FAOAF WEB-BASE GIS
INFORMATION SYSTEM
Karimi, Maziar (FAOAF)
[Link]@[Link]
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title WRI Web-based GIS system development/hosting on Amazon
Web Services (AWS) cloud
Total estimated cost for 12 Months 1800.16 USD
Level of confidentiality for the data Public
URL for a proposed solution [Link] or [Link]
Overall Risk profile Low Risk
Start date As soon as approved.
Organization/Department Water Resource and Irrigation/FAO Afghanistan
BACKGROUND
In Afghanistan, more than 60 percent of Afghanistan people are dependent on agriculture. Hence,
utilization of scarce water resources for the agricultural development is key to poverty alleviation and
economic growth of the country. Afghanistan is facing acute water shortage of water resources. The
situation is further aggravated because of the climate change impacts resulting in the increased frequency
and severity of water-related disasters like floods or droughts. Afghanistan consistently ranks high on the
Global Climate Risk Index, and each year weather-related hazards affect an estimated half a million of
population (WB and GFDRR, 2018).
In response to the crisis in Afghanistan, the World Bank (WB), Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund (ARTF),
donors, and international partners have found pragmatic ways to provide support for essential basic
services to the Afghan people to resolve the problem of food security.
FAO has started Emergency Food Security Project was started in the year 2021 with the financial support
of the World Bank. The project development objective is to restore production of food security crops for
targeted smallholder farmers. The project has two components namely: Component 1: Restoring
Agriculture Production and component 2: Provision of Water and Resilience Services
Component-2 of the project is being implemented by the WRI team under FAO-Afghanistan with the
following sub-components as below:
[Link] of Irrigation Systems (out farm and on farm). 2: Cleaning of Drainage canal systems. 3:
Repair/Rehabilitation of river and canal bank flood protection of agricultural land. 4: Range land
watershed management and rain/flood water harvesting and 5: Watershed management of upper
catchment of Karezes and minor repair.
CONTEXT
FAO Afghanistan and it WRI team through its eight regional offices namely central (Kabul), eastern
(Jalalabad), central highland (Bamyan), Western (Herat), Southern (Kandahar), south eastern (Gardez),
north (Mazar) and north east (Kunduz) are implementing all the five sub-components of the component-2
activities. These regional WRI team are carrying out sub-project identification, and implementation and
monitoring of all the activities in their regions. WRI main office oversees and supervises all the activities
being carried out by the regional offices on the regular basis.
Also these regional offices are also involved in the improvement of the upper catchment of Karezes,
construction of rainwater harvesting structures/watershed management structures,, intake and other
appurtenant structures of the canal system , riverbank protection works etc. Status of each sub-projects
are updated regularly as per the work [Link] the field. Status of karezes will change from non-active
to active over time after the rehabilitation and the command area will also be increased. The command
area will be increased after the rehabilitation of the canal systems or the improvement of the watershed
as well. Hence, all these data base needs to be well maintained and updated on the regularly.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
For decades, Afghanistan lacks a centralized Web-based GIS Information system to manage geospatial
data efficiently and effectively that lead to limiting ability of geo-based decision making at national level. A
Web based GIS application will provide access to real-time/near real-time spatial data and enhance
efficiency and productivity through global access. Also, it provides end-user satisfaction with user-friendly
environment and establishment of collaboration between users or team members and saving costs in
several ways. Moreover, as the solution, it will illustrate the distribution pattern of current and previous
interventions or project online, it will help to identify future sites/areas for new projects and prevent
duplicate selection by FAO or other water involved agencies.
WRI team and most specifically GIS team attempts to provide a solution for managing geospatial data,
enhance ability to make informed decisions in an effective manner. The team faces challenges in data
integration from different sources i.e from each of the eight regional offices. A central web-based system
is critical need of WRI to collect, collate, clean and store information and data of each individual sub-
project from every village and district and regularly update them. This will support future project selection
and avoid duplicate selection. Illustration to project geographical distribution led to notice the gaps in
remote areas. There is a need for a customized solution to meet unique demands of WRI through specific
tool that utilizes the familiarities and knowledge of the field in the part of all each of the eight regional
teams. There is a need of a tool that can handle large datasets or high volumes of users that can generate
shapefile (point, line, and polygon), export shapefiles, pdf and jpg format for desktop applications, pop-up
tool to show real time status of projects, and navigate through base maps.
The end-of-program outcome would be mainstreaming of Web based-GIS information system on cloud
technology able to produce useful, timely, accurate, reliable information needed for effective and efficient
water and irrigation Decision support system (DSS) which would lead to sustainable livelihood for the
people through the provision of water and resilience services.
Web-based technologies are growing rapidly, and wide ranges of application are migrating from desktop
applications to web based applications. This is because of many advantage that web-based applications
have. For instance, from accessibility, scalability, cost effectiveness, collaborations, real-time update, cross-
platform compatibility, data integration, easy update, and maintenance, enhance security and user-
friendly environment perspectives, web-based applications have potential than desktop ones.
Geographical information system (GIS) is computer system for storing, manipulating, displaying,
managing, and analyzing data which are geographically referenced to the earth. GIS is science of that
allows to consider the location perspective during decision making. GIS integration with internet and web
technology has been widely recognized as fundamental tool for storage and distribution of geospatial data
in private and public organizations. A web-based GIS provide a centralized and uniform interface to access
the distributed resource and data services. Moreover, combination of GIS and internet provides
possibilities, such as interactive access to geospatial data, real time data integration and transmission,
enhancement of functions of GIS and access to platform-independent GIS analysis tools. A Web-based GIS
services facilitate the direct access to the data and eliminating the need of dataset download to desktop
application.
Proposed activities
The below table shows the details of outcomes, outputs, and activities of the development/hoisting of
WRI Web based GIS information system on the AWS.
Development outcome Improve decision making for water and irrigation
those drives economic growth of Afghanistan people
Output Operational online Web-based GIS information
system
Activities System deployment on AWS could and:
[Link] and upgrade existing software and
capabilities
2. Regular data update
[Link] data sharing mechanism
[Link] download and upload tool
ESTIMATED COST
The below table describes the estimated costs of minimum mandatory services for the solution
deployment/hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS will consider 10 to 20 percent discount for
one to three years advance payment. I recommend using on-demand payment for initial three months
and after solution deployment, installation and troubleshooting of unexpected errors, go for one to three
years purchase.
Name Region Description Monthly Cost
Middle East
Amazon EC2 EC2 for Py/Django [Link] (2vCPU. 8GB RAM) 78.06 USD
(Bahrain)
Middle East
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Postgre DB [Link] (2vCPU, 4GB RAM) 69.77 USD
(Bahrain)
Middle East
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) S3 for static hosting (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) 0.10 USD
(Bahrain)
Monthly cost 147.93 USD
Total 12 months cost 1,775.16 USD
Domain 12 months Cost 25 USD
TOTAL COST FOR 12 MONTHS 1,800.16 USD
