Framework Agreement for Regional Assessment of River Basin Management Modelling, Monitoring, and Decision Support Tools in Asia (Water Resources Modelling and Decision Support Systems Specialist)

1. Project objective

Background

5.

Asia's river basins face increasing pressure from growing water demand, deteriorating water quality,

and climate change, which is intensifying floods, storm surges, and prolonged droughts.

Tackling these

challenges requires an integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach that builds resilient river

basins—basins that maintain water security most of the time so that communities can thrive and national

and regional development goals can be met.

6.

Under Output 1, the TA will review and consolidate existing knowledge, tools, and data systems and

apply analytics where necessary to fill remaining gaps in information, including the identification of

gaps and overlaps in existing data and research.

Under Output 2, the TA will review existing DMC

practices related to water resources and disaster risk management, including the capacity of data and

information systems.

The tools that DMCs use to observe and manage their basins are central to both

outputs: they are the means by which knowledge is generated and applied, and their institutional home,

use, and maintenance are an important part of how river basins are governed.

7.

RRBI poses that analytical tools are needed at three levels—regional, to raise awareness and identify

hotspots;

river basin, to prepare investment master plans and manage routine water allocation and flood

and drought events;

and intervention, to prepare feasibility studies and detailed designs of investments—

and that the three levels should be consistent with one another.

RRBI's approach also recognizes that

DMC ownership depends on building on the institutions, data, and models that DMCs already use and trust;

that fully integrated models are difficult to develop and maintain, so linked, modular approaches are

preferred;

that models require sustained maintenance and updating, ideally by the institutions that

developed them and in step with regular planning and outlook cycles;

and that lasting impact depends on

the institutionalization of knowledge in DMCs through long-term capacity building.

An inventory of the

institutional knowledge setting, of the existing and trusted tools in the DMCs, and of their knowledge

needs is the necessary first step.

This assignment carries out that inventory.

8.

The intent of the assignment is to build on available information, not to recreate it.

A substantial

body of relevant material already exists—for example, ADB's internal database of water projects screened

for analytical tools;

the baselines and analytics being prepared under the SEA RRBI investment outlook

and by the Subproject 2 knowledge partners for the Hindu Kush Himalaya;

the Asian Water Development

Outlook and ADB country water security assessments;

and published assessments of hydrometeorological

services and water information systems by WMO, the World Bank, the Alliance for Hydromet Development,

the Early Warnings for All initiative, and regional bodies and research institutes.

The full inventory

of sources will be agreed at inception;

ADB will provide its internal materials at commencement.

The

Expert's task is to consolidate this material within a single framework, extend it from published

national and regional sources, and record clearly what remains unknown.

9.

Experience across the region shows that many modelling and information tools have been introduced

through externally supported projects.

Some have become part of routine practice in national agencies;

others have been used mainly during the project that introduced them.

Understanding which tools are in

routine use, by whom, on what data, and with what maintenance and financing arrangements is therefore as

important as knowing which tools exist.

The assessment will treat the institutional setting, the actual

use of tools in decisions, and the arrangements for their maintenance and updating as explicit lines of

enquiry, so that RRBI can build on what DMCs already use and design its capacity-building program

accordingly.

10.

A companion assignment, the regional water governance assessment, is being prepared under Output 2

for the same DMCs using the same phased approach.

That assessment covers policies, laws, institutions,

financing, and the legal and institutional basis for data sharing and for the use of planning tools.

This assignment covers the tools themselves—what they are, who operates them, how they are used, and how

they are sustained.

The two assessments will use the same country list, agency names, and database

conventions so that their results can be read together, and the Expert will coordinate with the

governance expert as described in paragraph 49.

Objective and Purpose of the Assignment

A.

Objective and Purpose of the Assignment

1.

The objective of the assignment is to prepare a consistent, evidence-based regional assessment of the

modelling, monitoring, forecasting, and decision support tools through which ADB's developing member

countries (DMCs) in Asia observe, understand, plan, and manage their river basins.

The assessment will

establish a regional baseline of the tools in use—from hydrometeorological monitoring and data systems,

through forecasting and hydrological, flood, drought, allocation, groundwater, and water quality models,

to land use analytics and integrated decision support platforms—together with the institutions that

design, operate, maintain, and update them, how often and for which decisions they are used, the

arrangements that sustain them, and the DMCs' own plans for strengthening them.

It will cover all river

basin related sectors, including water resources management, disaster risk management (DRM), irrigation,

water supply, hydropower, and environment.

It will identify each country's strengths and practical

opportunities for strengthening, referenced to good practice in OECD and comparable countries, and

recommend how ADB and its partners can support DMCs in realizing those opportunities.

2.

The Resilient River Basin Initiative (RRBI) is a regional TA cluster (TA 59078-REG) that promotes an

IWRM approach to building resilient river basins in Asia through a source-to-sea, landscape, and systems

approach with a long-term planning horizon.

Its intended outcome is that opportunities for strengthened

climate and disaster resilience are increased.

It has four outputs: Output 1, knowledge solutions for

long-term water security strengthened;

Output 2, approaches for strengthening river basin governance and

financing prepared;

Output 3, river basin management and water security investment opportunities

identified;

and Output 4, knowledge exchanges on best practices enhanced.

Two subprojects have

commenced: Subproject 1, the Southeast Asia Resilient River Basin Initiative, which focuses on

investment planning and project preparation for Southeast Asian DMCs;

and Subproject 2, Water Balance

and Crop Production in Major Asian River Basins, which assesses water availability and crop production

in Hindu Kush Himalaya river basins under future climate and development scenarios and supports initial

TA management and knowledge sharing.

3.

The assignment directly contributes to Output 1, which will review and consolidate existing

knowledge, tools, and data systems and identify gaps and overlaps in existing data and research.

It

answers three questions RRBI has posed for Output 1: (i) what knowledge and tools are already available

in DMCs; (ii) which DMC and regional institutions should be engaged in RRBI;

and (iii) what institution

and capacity building is needed for DMCs to own and sustain the tools RRBI will develop.

It also

provides the substantive basis for the fourth review area of the Output 2 governance review, which

examines the capacity of DMC data and information systems, and for performance indicator 2a of the TA

design and monitoring framework, in coordination with the companion regional water governance assessment

(paragraph 10).

4.

This assignment covers Phase 1 only: a desktop review of published and ADB-held sources for all DMCs.

The Expert will work with ADB during inception to develop the assessment framework and templates, apply

them to all DMCs from secondary sources, and close Phase 1 with an interpretation of the findings,

recommended next steps for ADB, a gap analysis, and a recommended course of action for Phase 2, which

may involve validation with DMC institutions, interviews, tool demonstrations, and basin-level

assessments.

ADB will decide on Phase 2 on the basis of the Phase 1 results.

The framework must be

simple enough to be applied consistently across 25 countries from secondary sources, rigorous enough to

be defensible with governments and development partners, and structured so that its results can be

maintained as a living register within the RRBI knowledge base and updated in future cycles.

B.

Scope of Work

Geographic scope

11.

The assessment covers the 25 ADB DMCs in Asia listed below, organized by ADB's regional groupings:

The 14 Pacific DMCs covered by ADB's Pacific Department are excluded from this assignment.

In large and

federally organized DMCs—the People's Republic of China and India in particular, and where relevant

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan—monitoring, modelling, and decision-support tools often differ by

state or province and by river basin.

The assessment will record subnational and basin-specific tools as

far as published sources allow, prioritizing national systems, tools used in the RRBI priority basins,

and representative major basins, and recording in the gap register where subnational coverage cannot be

established from the desk;

exhaustive subnational coverage is not expected in Phase 1.

• Central and West Asia (10): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan,

Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

• East Asia (2): People's Republic of China, Mongolia.

• South Asia (5): Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka.

• Southeast Asia (8): Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Philippines,

Thailand, Timor-Leste, Viet Nam.

12.

The DMCs are the object of the assessment.

In addition, a small reference set of OECD and comparable

countries and basins, selected with ADB at inception, will be used for comparison: the assessment will

document their tool architectures and institutional arrangements as good practice against which DMC

arrangements can be referenced and practical strengthening opportunities identified, in the same way as

for the companion governance assessment.

Reference countries are not themselves profiled in the register.

Thematic scope

13.

The assessment will address the following ten families of tools, covering monitoring, data,

forecasting, modelling, and decision support across all river basin related sectors;

the detailed

structure will be agreed with ADB at inception: Several tools and platforms span more than one family—

integrated modelling suites, forecasting platforms, and decision support systems in particular.

The

register will record each tool once, under a primary family, with cross-references to the other families

it covers, so that the families remain comparable without double counting.

The focus throughout is on

applied systems: tools that are in operational use by, or in the process of being adopted by, government

agencies, river basin organizations, hydromet services, utilities, and operators, or that demonstrably

support their decisions.

Models developed for academic research, including doctoral research, are not

registered individually unless an operating agency is taking them up.

(i) Hydrometeorological observation and monitoring networks.

Rainfall, climate, streamflow, reservoir,

groundwater, water quality, and sediment monitoring;

telemetry and automation;

remote sensing and earth

observation used operationally;

network coverage and data continuity.

(ii) Hydrological data management, archive, and sharing systems.

National and basin hydrological

databases and archives;

data quality procedures;

data portals and open data platforms;

common data

catalogues;

arrangements for exchange between agencies.

(iii) Weather, seasonal, and climate forecasting and projections.

Access to and use of numerical weather

prediction, seasonal outlooks, and downscaled climate projections in water planning and operations.

(iv) Rainfall–runoff and catchment hydrological models.

Catchment and regional hydrological models,

including snow and glacier, land process, and water balance models, and their use in planning and design.

(v) Flood modelling, mapping, forecasting, and early warning.

Hydraulic and hydrodynamic models;

flood

hazard and risk mapping;

flood forecasting systems;

early warning systems and their links to DRM

agencies;

coastal and storm surge modelling where relevant to river basins.

(vi) Drought monitoring, forecasting, and early warning.

Drought indices and monitors;

seasonal drought

outlooks;

reservoir operating triggers and drought planning tools.

(vii) Water allocation and river basin simulation models.

Network-based system models for water

allocation, reservoir and hydropower operation, irrigation demand, and basin planning;

their role in

routine allocation and in investment planning.

(viii) Groundwater, water quality, sediment, and ecosystem models.

Groundwater flow and management

models;

water quality and pollution models;

sediment transport and reservoir sedimentation;

environmental flow and ecosystem services assessment tools.

(ix) Land use, spatial planning, and geospatial analytics.

Land use and land cover change analysis;

watershed, erosion, and landscape models;

geographic information system platforms;

spatial planning

tools that link land and water decisions.

(x) Decision support systems, integrated platforms, and sector operational tools.

Basin planning

decision support systems;

investment prioritization and economic appraisal tools;

dashboards, digital

platforms, and digital twins;

irrigation scheduling, reservoir operation, and water supply operational

systems where they interact with basin management;

DRM information platforms.

14.

For each tool or system identified, the assessment will record, to the extent that published sources

allow: (i) identity—name, software or platform, developer or equipment vendor (to be named), version,

and licensing model (commercial, open source, or in-house); (ii) purpose—the decisions it supports, the

water management functions and sectors it serves, the RRBI level (regional, river basin, or

intervention) at which it operates, and its geographic and administrative coverage—national, state or

provincial, or basin-specific—naming the jurisdictions or basins covered; (iii) institutional

arrangements—the owner, operator, maintainer, and host institution, any mandate or legal basis for its

use, and development partner support and financing; (iv) use—who uses it, how often, whether use is

routine or project-based, and evidence of its use in plans, operations, permits, or warnings; (v) data—

principal inputs, dependence on monitoring networks, data quality control, and data-sharing

arrangements; (vi) status and sustainability—development, pilot, operational, or routine status, date of

last update, maintenance and financing arrangements, and staff capacity and training; (vii) integration—

links to other tools and consistency across levels;

and (viii) evidence—source, date, and confidence

rating.

15.

The results will be structured so that they can be read in three ways: by tool family (paragraph

13);

by RRBI level (regional, river basin, and intervention);

and by water management function—water

allocation including irrigation, storage, and conveyance;

flood management;

drought management;

water

supply and sanitation;

and environmental services (water quality, erosion, ecosystems)—following the

structure used in the SEA RRBI investment outlook and the companion governance assessment so that the

results can be used directly in the preparation of investment road maps.

16.

The assessment will also record each DMC's own plans and programs for strengthening its monitoring,

modelling, forecasting, and information systems, as stated in national water, DRM, and

hydrometeorological service strategies, digital and open data strategies, national adaptation plans,

Early Warnings for All national road maps, basin plans, and the programs financed by government and

development partners that are under preparation or implementation.

These plans are the starting point

for identifying where RRBI support would add value, and the assessment will characterize, for each DMC,

the direction and stage of these plans and the institutions leading them.

Transboundary basins, regional programs, and supporting institutions

17.

Transboundary basins and regional programs are within scope, and for these the assessment will cover

both the institutions and the tools.

For each shared basin, the assessment will identify the joint

bodies and national agencies involved, the shared or basin-wide monitoring networks, data-sharing

platforms, forecasting systems, and models in use, who operates and maintains them, how they are used in

basin decisions, and their relationship to national systems.

At a minimum this covers: the Mekong (the

MRC's data and information services portal, decision support framework, flood and drought forecasting,

and joint monitoring, and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation's water resources cooperation center);

the Aral

Sea basin (the ICWC, its Scientific-Information Center's basin models and information systems, and the

International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea);

the Indus (the Permanent Indus Commission and national

flood forecasting arrangements);

the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna system (the Joint Rivers Commission,

flood forecasting and data exchange arrangements, and the regional flood information system supported by

ICIMOD);

and the Kura-Araks, Selenga, Ili and Irtysh, Helmand, and Salween basins and the Indonesia–

Timor-Leste watersheds, where arrangements exist.

Regional programs and platforms to be covered include

the ASEAN Working Group on Water Resources Management, the South Asia Hydromet Forum and RIMES, CAREC

and the Central Asia regional programs, ICIMOD's regional information systems, WMO regional associations

and regional climate centers, WISER Asia-Pacific and the other CARA components, and the global

forecasting and earth observation services that DMC agencies use operationally (for example the Global

Flood Awareness System, GEOGLOWS, Google Flood Hub, SERVIR, Copernicus, Aqueduct, and the Water Risk

Filter).

ADB's own analytical platforms, including the Risk Explorer, are also to be considered as

reference points for integration.

18.

This assessment will include the identification and profiling of the research and technical

institutes, universities, and regional centers of expertise that develop, host, apply, or support the

tools in each DMC and for regional programs, and that could support DMCs and RRBI in the future.

This

includes national hydrological, water resources, and irrigation research institutes and centers;

national and regional universities with water resources modelling and hydroinformatics programs;

regional and international centers located in the region (for example the Asian Institute of Technology,

ICIMOD, IWMI's regional offices, RIMES, the SIC-ICWC and its training center, the International Centre

for Water Hazard and Risk Management, and UNESCO category 2 water centers);

and the regional

partnerships of international institutes (for example IHE Delft, Deltares, DHI, and the Hydrologic

Engineering Center).

For each, the assessment will record its fields of expertise, the tools it develops

or supports, its relationships with government agencies and regional bodies, its training and capacitybuilding role, and its potential to host, apply, or sustain RRBI tools at each of the three levels.

Universities and research institutes are profiled for the knowledge, tools, and services they provide

that are used, or could realistically be used, by DMC agencies and by RRBI, and for their capacity to

host and sustain applied systems—not for an inventory of the research models they have developed for

academic purposes.

Exclusions

19.

The assignment does not include developing, configuring, or running models;

auditing the technical

quality of individual models or forecasts;

procuring or evaluating software;

cataloguing models

developed solely for academic research;

or, in Phase 1, primary data collection, surveys, interviews

with government officials, or country missions.

Where the desktop review identifies a need for such work

it will scope it for Phase 2.

Assessment of water and sanitation utility operations is included only

where utility systems interact with basin management (for example, source monitoring, abstraction, and

drought operations).

Approach and Phasing

20.

Phase 1 will be implemented in three stages over 20 weeks.

Each stage closes with a review meeting

with ADB at which the approach for the next stage is confirmed.

1A.

Inception and methodology (Week 1–4) - Review existing material;

develop with ADB the assessment

framework, tool register structure and attributes, status and sustainability scale, country profile

template, evidence and confidence rules, and gap register;

map development partner, research institute,

and software developer activity;

pilot the methodology on two countries, selected in consultation with

ADB;

agree the work plan.

1B.

Desktop review (week 4–15) - Prepare country profiles for all DMCs from published and ADB-held

sources;

populate the tools register;

review ADB's water portfolio for tools introduced and their

status;

review institutions and tools for transboundary basins and regional programs;

review research

and technical institutes and universities;

prepare the regional overview, cross-country comparison, and

first cut of strengthening opportunities;

identify institutions to engage in RRBI.

1C.

Interpretation, gap analysis, and next steps (Week 15–20) - Compile the information and analysis gap

register;

assess the reliability of desktop findings;

interpret the findings for RRBI's three-level tool

architecture and recommend next steps for ADB;

recommend the course of action for Phase 2 (countries,

basins, questions, methods, partners, effort, and cost) and prepare the draft Phase 2 terms of

reference;

present at a workshop;

finalize the Phase 1 report and hand over the register.

21.

Principles that will guide the work: (i) published sources first—ADB project and evaluation

documents, development partner assessments, regional body publications, agency websites and reports, and

peer-reviewed literature are the sources for Phase 1, and gaps are recorded rather than filled by new

data collection, although the Expert may, through ADB and as needed, make limited contact with DMC focal

points to clarify or validate specific desk findings;

such contacts are targeted clarifications rather

than systematic consultation—which remains a Phase 2 method—and any information obtained is recorded in

the register with its source, date, and confidence rating like any other evidence; (ii) comparability—

one register structure, one status scale, one evidence rule for all countries, with every entry

traceable to a cited source, its date, and a confidence rating; (iii) sensitivity—results are presented

as country profiles and opportunities rather than rankings, and, consistent with the TA paper, findings

are presented in full respect of national sovereignty and of the professional standing of national

agencies; (iv) ownership—the register is designed so that DMC institutions can validate and update their

own entries in Phase 2 and beyond;

and (v) usability—outputs are structured for direct use by ADB

country and sector teams in country programming, investment road maps, project design, and the design of

RRBI's tools and capacity-building program.

Use of AI-assisted tools

22.

The Expert is expected to use AI-assisted tools for source discovery, extraction from long project

documents and technical reports, translation, first-draft profiling against the templates, register

population, and consistency checking across countries, and the level of effort has been set on that

basis.

The following conditions apply. (i) Disclosure: the Inception Report will describe the tools,

workflow, and quality-assurance steps to be used, and the two pilot country profiles will be used to

test them, with ADB spot-checking a sample of entries against primary sources. (ii) Provenance: AI

output is not a source;

every entry and factual statement must cite a primary or institutional document

that the Expert has personally verified, with its date and a confidence rating, and each register record

will carry a verification flag. (iii) Data handling: the Expert will use tools and settings that do not

retain or train on inputs, will not upload non-public ADB or third-party material to tools without ADB's

agreement, and will comply with any ADB guidance on the use of AI by consultants. (iv) Reusability:

deliverables will be machine-readable by design—the register in a defined schema, the framework guidance

note written so that the assessment can be reapplied in a future refresh, and the prompt templates or

scripts used handed over with the register—so that the assessment can be maintained within the RRBI

knowledge base. (v) Accountability: the Expert remains fully responsible for the accuracy, judgement,

and quality of all deliverables.

Detailed Tasks and/or Expected Output

Stage 1A — Inception and methodology (indicative 15 working days)

23.

Review the RRBI TA paper and subproject reports, the RRBI technical workshop synthesis, the SEA RRBI

investment outlook inception and interim reports, the Subproject 2 knowledge partners' modelling

reports, ADB's water project database, the comparative scan of basin information platforms, and the

framework of the companion governance assessment;

hold start-up discussions with SD2-AFNR, the RRBI

knowledge partners, and water specialists in the regional departments.

24.

Compile the inventory of published and ADB-held sources to be used, by country and tool family,

including: ADB project documents (reports and recommendations of the President, TA reports, consultant

and completion reports, and evaluation reports);

WMO country profiles, hydrological services

publications, and Early Warnings for All gap analyses;

World Bank and GFDRR hydrometeorological

modernization assessments and project documents;

UNESCO, UNDP, and bilateral partner reports;

national

hydrometeorological service, water agency, river basin organization, and DRM agency websites, annual

reports, and technical publications;

regional body publications;

software developer case records;

and

peer-reviewed literature.

Confirm access arrangements with ADB.

25.

Work with ADB to develop the assessment framework, tailored to RRBI's objectives of resilient river

basins, water security, and investment readiness.

The framework is expected to cover the ten tool

families in paragraph 13 with the attributes in paragraph 14, a status and sustainability scale,

evidence and confidence rules, and a mapping to the three RRBI levels, the five water management

functions, and recognized reference frameworks for hydrological services and water information systems;

ADB will table a starting structure for discussion, which the Expert may reshape.

In doing so, the

Expert will propose how existing assessments by WMO, the World Bank, and other partners are incorporated

without repeating them, and how absence of published evidence is recorded.

For the hydrometeorological

monitoring, data, forecasting, and early warning families, the status scale will be aligned with the

maturity levels of the Country Hydromet Diagnostics of the Alliance for Hydromet Development, so that

results can be compared with WMO and Early Warnings for All assessments without re-scoring.

The

framework will be agreed with ADB at the inception workshop.

26.

Define the reference set of good practice: select OECD and comparable countries and basins whose

tool architectures and institutional arrangements are relevant to Asian conditions (for example,

national water models and delta programs in the Netherlands, national water information services in

Australia, smart water management in the Republic of Korea, river information systems in Japan,

continental flood awareness systems in Europe, and national water agency information systems in Brazil),

together with reference points within the region where DMC institutions have established durable,

nationally owned systems (for example India's national water informatics platform and the People's

Republic of China's digital twin river basin program), and document the practices that will be used as

reference points for each tool family.

27.

Prepare the country profile template, the tools register structure and schema (compatible with ADB's

water project database, the companion governance database, the common data catalogue being developed

under the SEA RRBI investment outlook, and the RRBI knowledge base), the information and analysis gap

register template, and the AI-assisted workflow and quality-assurance plan described in paragraph 22.

The profile template and register will be designed to be read in three ways—by tool family, by RRBI

level, and by water management function—as described in paragraph 15.

28.

Map what development partners, regional bodies, research institutes, universities, and software

developers are doing on monitoring, modelling, and decision support tools in each DMC (for example, WMO,

the World Bank and GFDRR, UNDP, UNESCO, the WISER Asia-Pacific program and the other CARA components,

RIMES and the South Asia Hydromet Forum, JICA, KOICA, Deltares, DHI, the United States Army Corps of

Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Center, IWMI, ICIMOD, MRC, ICWC, the Asian Institute of Technology, and

national research institutes and universities), identifying overlaps to avoid and partners to engage.

29.

Pilot the methodology and the AI-assisted workflow on two countries with contrasting profiles and

source availability;

support ADB's spot-check of a sample of entries against primary sources;

refine the

framework, templates, and workflow;

and record the effort per country to confirm the work plan.

30.

Present the framework at a virtual or physical inception workshop with ADB staff and the RRBI

working group, and finalize the Inception Report.

31.

Output: Inception Report, including the source inventory, the assessment framework and templates,

the AI-assisted workflow and quality-assurance plan, partner mapping, two pilot country profiles, and

the work plan.

Stage 1B — Desktop review of all DMCs (indicative 36 working days)

32.

Prepare a standardized country profile for each DMC covering all ten tool families, with the tools

and systems identified, the institutions that design, operate, maintain, and update them, status and

sustainability ratings, a short narrative on strengths and opportunities, the tools introduced through

ADB and other partner projects and their current status, the DMC's own plans and programs for

strengthening its systems (paragraph 16), and full source references.

Include for each country the RRBIlevel view and the functional view described in paragraph 15, using the same agency names and basin

references as the SEA RRBI investment outlook and the companion governance assessment.

33.

Populate the tools register: one record per tool per country with the attributes in paragraph 14;

a

register of institutions (hydrometeorological services, water agencies, river basin organizations, DRM

agencies, irrigation and water supply agencies, research institutes, and universities) with their roles

in relation to each tool;

a register of monitoring networks and data systems;

and a register of

development partner supported tool initiatives, current and completed.

34.

Review ADB's water portfolio: for the projects in ADB's water project database, identify the

monitoring, modelling, and decision support tools financed or introduced, their intended institutional

home, and their current status where published, and draw lessons on the conditions under which tools

introduced through projects have entered routine use.

35.

Prepare a transboundary and regional review covering the basins, programs, and platforms in

paragraph 17: for each shared basin and regional body, the joint and national institutions involved, the

shared monitoring networks, data platforms, forecasting systems, and models, who operates and maintains

them, how they are used in basin decisions, their relationship to national systems, and their relevance

and potential role in RRBI;

and the global and regional open platforms in operational use by DMC

agencies.

36.

Prepare a review of research and technical institutes, universities, and regional centers of

expertise as described in paragraph 18, with a register entry for each and a short assessment, by

subregion, of where expertise that could support DMCs and regional programs is concentrated and how it

is currently linked to government agencies.

37.

Prepare the regional overview: cross-country comparison by tool family, RRBI level, water management

function, and subregion;

common patterns, including where analytical capacity is concentrated in

national agencies and where it is concentrated in partner-supported projects, and the conditions

associated with sustained use;

areas of strength that could be shared between DMCs;

and a preliminary

list of strengthening opportunities by type of measure—from making fuller use of existing tools and

data, through upgrading and extending tools and networks, to new systems—identifying where each

opportunity would support a plan or program the DMC has already adopted.

38.

Identify for each DMC, and for each shared basin and regional program, the institutions (agencies,

river basin organizations, joint bodies, research and technical institutes, universities, and regional

centers) that should be engaged in RRBI and their capacity to host, apply, and sustain RRBI tools at the

three levels, together with the national priorities for strengthening river basin management and water

security and the DMC's own plans for its systems, as stated in national plans, strategies, and ADB

country partnership strategies, as an input to Output 1.

39.

Present findings to ADB at a review meeting and adjust the Stage 1C program as required.

40.

Output: Draft Regional Desktop Review — Landscape of River Basin Management Tools in Asia, with all

country profiles (annexed), the populated tools register, the ADB portfolio review, the transboundary

and regional review, the review of research and technical institutes and universities, and the regional

overview.

Stage 1C — Interpretation, gap analysis, and recommended next steps (indicative 15 working days)

41.

Compile the information and analysis gap register: for each country and tool family, the questions

that could not be answered from published sources, the questions that require validation with DMC

institutions, and the materiality of each gap for RRBI's tool development and capacity-building program.

42.

Assess the reliability of the desktop findings by country and tool family, using the confidence

ratings in the register, and identify where validation with national hydrometeorological services, water

agencies, and river basin organizations is needed before the findings are used.

43.

Interpret the findings by tool family, RRBI level, water management function, and subregion: what

the landscape means for RRBI's three-level tool architecture;

where DMC systems and institutions are

established enough to serve as the trusted basis for RRBI tools at each level;

where a regional or

shared tool is the practical route;

and where sustained use has, and has not, followed the introduction

of tools, and the conditions associated with each;

with the confidence of each conclusion stated.

44.

Recommend next steps for ADB, distinguishing: (a) immediate actions within RRBI's current work,

including which existing DMC tools, data platforms, and institutions to use for the Southeast Asia and

Hindu Kush Himalaya analytics and for the priority basins; (b) measures ADB could support in the near

term through ongoing projects and technical assistance, screened for where the benefits would far

outweigh the costs and aligned where possible with the DMCs' own plans (paragraph 16); (c) partner

engagement, including where WMO, the World Bank, the CARA components, and regional bodies are already

active and where coordination or co-financing is indicated;

and (d) the questions that Phase 2 must

settle before larger commitments are made.

45.

Recommend the course of action for Phase 2: the countries and basins to be covered, the questions to

be answered, the methods (for example, a structured questionnaire to national agencies through ADB

resident missions, key informant interviews, tool demonstrations, and consultations with development

partners and software developers), the partners to involve, and the indicative effort and cost;

and

prepare the draft Phase 2 terms of reference.

46.

Prepare a preliminary outline of the institution and capacity-building needs for DMCs to own and

operate tools at the three RRBI levels, distinguishing between DMCs whose institutions can adopt RRBI

tools directly and those where RRBI would support the development of that capability, as an input to the

design of the RRBI capacity-building program.

47.

Present the draft Final Phase 1 Report at a virtual workshop with ADB staff and the RRBI working

group;

finalize the report;

hand over the register in its defined schema, the templates, the prompt

templates or scripts used, and a short framework guidance note to the RRBI knowledge base so the

assessment can be reapplied and updated in future.

48.

Output: Final Phase 1 Report — Regional Assessment of River Basin Management Tools: Desktop Review,

Interpretation, Gap Analysis, and Recommended Next Steps, with the gap register, reliability assessment,

interpretation of findings, recommended next steps for ADB, capacity-building outline, draft Phase 2

Extraction covers only the accessible source. Linked TORs and later addenda are not verified unless their text has been retrieved; a missing field never means no requirement.