In 2021, we continued the activities to introduce the software tool SIRHA of iCarto for licencing and billing of water users within the ARAs. Amongst others, the monthly “debate group" meetings were continued
ARA Sul has used this tool since 2019 and the efficiency of the working process for licensing and billing increased dramatically. As a result, ARA Sul now has a better view of the total water use, and the revenues from water users increased. Now, fewer errors in data exist and less time is spent on the process. The video in this link https://youtu.be/AI8qQSWp84c explains these improvements.
In 2020/2021, the former five ARA’s merged into three ARA’s. In addition, the department structure changed. Now the SIRHA tool has to be adapted to this new situation and the databases of water users have to be joined. More training in the use of SIRHA will be organised for ARA Centro and ARA Norte. For this work, a new assignment for iCarto for the coming year will be prepared.
Last year a prototype was developed to integrate the data of water users in the SIRHA tool with the water allocation model (WEAP) to facilitate the hydrological assessment of new requests for water use.
ARA Sul has to send 1000-1500 bills to water users every month. To improve the efficiency of this process, a prototype was made for the integration of the SIRHA data with the billing software Primavera. In the coming year, these two prototypes will be used in the working processes of ARA Sul and will be evaluated. A new pilot will be started in ARA Sul to use satellite images to find water users and a test will be done with e-learning course online requests for a licence by new water users. After a positive evaluation of these new tools, we intend to introduce these new tools in the other two ARAs.
Under the first objective of the water allocation component, aiming to improve the process of licensing and billing, a term of reference was developed by Blue Deal with the input of all the ARA’s for the continuation of the work performed by iCarto for the development and operation of SIRHA. On May 28, 2021, the last monthly meeting of the Debate Group moderated by Anton Amado took place via Skype, where new priorities were defined by each ARA for the continuation of the partnership with iCarto. The following 4 priorities were defined: tasks for unification and restructuring, training, follow-up, support and debate, identified improvements in the system and prototype developments.
