PhD Thesis Emmanuel Obeng Bekoe - Cranfield University

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Making historical data available to the wider hydrological community
With the paucity of current or recent data available within the Densu, the
extensive data that has historically been collected gains greater importance for
understanding the hydrology of the Basin. Getting better value from this
historical data by making it more widely available is therefore important. Ten
rainfall gauging stations were identified in the Densu Basin and 1 outside. Yet
for this research, only 3 stations were considered since only data from these
were readily available and had longer duration records. The other records
could not be accessed because they were ‘lost’, due to archiving and storage
problems. There is therefore the need to locate historical data and transfer it
into a format that can be made available to the hydrological community. Also
historical data generated by other data collecting agencies such as the
Research Institutions, Universities, water related non-governmental
organizations (NGO’s) are difficult to access as they are not readily available to
the wider hydrological community. This observation has been experienced by
the author in several instances whilst undertaking research in different aspect of
hydrology as a researcher in Ghana. This calls for collaboration between all
data generating institutions and NGO’s and the recognised data collection
institutions such as Meteorological Services Department of Ghana, the
Hydrological Services Department of the Ministry of Works and Housing of
Ghana to enable data generated to be transferred to them for proper auditing
and storage.
Ensuring that all data (new as well as existing) is subject to Quality
assessment (QA) procedures
Data auditing for quality assessment is paramount to provide confidence in the
data and to ensure that decisions are based upon reliable information.
However, from the examination of data e.g. streamflow, there appear to be no
formal QA procedures to check data quality in Ghana. This calls for such
procedures to be established and enforced to enable data to be ‘confidently’
used. This should ensure that suspect data is readily identified and flagged or
Emmanuel Obeng Bekoe Phd Thesis Chapter 6 Discussion