Jaltol Digital Tool

On Tuesday, 30 November 2021, CSEI-ATREE launched Jaltol V1—a free, opensource water accounting tool—developed with support from our funders, India Climate Collaborative and the EdelGive Foundation. The presentation made by the invited speakers at the event is available here and here.

About Jaltol

Jaltol is a free, open-source water accounting tool that makes water balance estimation easy in grassroot communities. With the Jaltol plugin, decision makers in the rural water security planning process can get data on their watershed and estimate the water budget at the click of a button. It allows them to make more informed decisions about water management in their panchayat. The plugin uses remote sensing data—rainfall, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, surface water/groundwater storage, land use/land cover—together on one platform in an easy-to-use format, making water accounting easy. 
Read more:  How Jaltol addresses the capacity bottleneck in rural water security

How to use Jaltol

Use the Jaltol user manual and documentation to understand how to install and use the tool. You could also watch the video tutorial to understand the tool better. Basic knowledge of QGIS is helpful but not necessary to explore Jaltol's functionalities.
Read more: Jaltol user manual and documentation

The need for digital tools in rural water security


Jaltol was developed as part of CSEI’s Food Futures Initiative that aims to help boost water security and restore degraded land to improve 150,000 livelihoods in 2000 villages, by 2030. Working towards this goal, we talked to grassroot communities about their water management challenges. At the community level, we identified a lack of water data and hydrological expertise to use the data as critical gaps. We created the Jaltol tool, as we recognised that digital tools could make data easily accessible and address the “expertise bottleneck”.
Read more: How digital tools can address rural water security

Jaltol in the media

23/11/21, The Wire: Why We Need Data Stories & Digital Tools to Achieve Rural Water Security by Dr. Veena Srinivasan
02/12/21, Gaon Connection: Jaltol, an open-source digital tool to ensure water security in rural India

Understanding rural water security

India is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world. But solving India’s water crisis will require us to take a hard look at how we collect and use data in the water sector. Here are a few blog posts that capture CSEI’s thoughts on rural water security in India and the role we see ourselves playing:

Jaltol version 2

The primary purpose of the Jaltol plugin is ease of use for the user. We will need additional resources and time to incorporate the feedback we have received. Discussions are on about the next version of the tool which will include the features recommended by our early users. Read the blog post below for more on the feedback we received.

Read more: Building a robust tool to estimate water balances

We are keen on building strategic partnerships to develop and scale the Jaltol tool. If you are interested in partnering with us, please email us at jaltol@atree.org.

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