Jaltol Digital Tool

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. 

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.

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”.