The "Evaluation and impact assessment of global water models” paper writing workshop in Frankfurt, September 2022

Four years after the previous, very successful workshop in Frankfurt in 2018, we invited global water sector modellers and data users to a paper writing workshop on 21-22 September 2022 at the Institute of Physical Geography of the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany.

by Hannes Müller Schmied


The workshop had excellent attendance, with 17 researchers joining on-site and 9 remotely. There were many engaging and fruitful discussions focused around publication plans, datasets and the ongoing ISIMIP simulation phase.

The themes covered all aspects of model intercomparison such as: increasing the common understanding of the models we are using (e.g., with a standardized visualization of the model schemes); model evaluation (e.g., evaluation of drought patterns, various hydrological fluxes and storages such as total water storage and reservoir storage) both between the models and with reference data; novel ways to analyse model output; and impact assessment with a strong focus on drought and water scarcity. Also discussed was the development of new datasets and adaptations of the modelling protocol to extend the research questions that could be answered with the ISIMIP3 global water sector simulations.

A particularly valuable aspect of the workshop was a deep discussion on the harmonization of input datasets for global water models. Similarly, several discussions focused on collaboration between different ISIMIP sectors (e.g., the lakes sector), which was especially useful for future planning.

The workshop was also an excellent opportunity to enhance collaboration within the sector and to strengthen friendships and build new ones.

We very much thank EU COST Association and the COST Action CA19139 PROCLIAS for supporting this workshop.

Hannes Müller Schmied and Simon Gosling

Coordinators of the Global Water Sector in ISIMIP