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Armenia's water, in your hands
Ten tools, no installation, no account. Everything runs on public data: NASA satellites, OpenStreetMap, Armenia's statistical office, published water balances and footprints. Keys 1 to 9 and 0 switch tools, H comes home.
Companion to slide 25 of the presentation "Armenia's water". Built for the Water Management training course, Yerevan, 11 to 16 September 2026.
Sevan from orbit
Pick a day. The image comes live from NASA Worldview. Black or grey means no clear scene that day: try the day before.
Window 44.90 to 45.75 E, 40.10 to 40.68 N. Data: NASA Worldview, Global Imagery Browse Services. VIIRS on NOAA-20 passes daily at 375 m; HLS combines Landsat 8 and 9 with Sentinel-2 at 30 m. Public domain. Time-lapse frames are VIIRS, one a day.
Water map
Click a dot. Each one carries a number from the presentation and its source. Toggle groups below.
Map: OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Positions of the Akhuryan reservoir and the Aeratsia plant are approximate.
Armenia's water in numbers
Official figures from Armstat, tables C2, C3 and C7, million m³ a year. Hover the chart, switch series on and off, download the table.
Source: Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia, ArmStatBank, environment section, fetched 13 September 2026 through the PX-Web API. Water exploitation index: annual abstraction as a share of that year's renewable resources.
Sevan simulator
A rounded water balance of the lake. Move the sliders and watch the level to 2050. Today: 1,900.7 m.
Teaching model, rounded. Baseline a year: rivers, springs and groundwater about 800 million m³, rain and snow on the lake about 500, Arpa-Sevan tunnel 220 to 240, evaporation about 1,100, other losses about 50; 1 million m³ moves the level by 0.8 mm over 1,242 km². Sources: Ecoportal Armenia; studies cited in Preprints.org 2026 (inflow 1,400 to 1,800, evaporation 1,093); Fourth National Communication, 2020 (inflow down to 34% by 2100, evaporation up 10 to 25%). Real years differ: 2026 rose 46 cm in six months.
From reservoir to root
How much water must leave the reservoir so the crop gets what it needs. Change the method and watch the losses.
Where the water goes
Crop water needs per season and efficiencies: FAO Irrigation Water Management Training Manuals 3 and 4 (Brouwer et al., 1985 to 1989), typical values: surface irrigation 60%, sprinkler 75%, drip 90%; earth canals 60%, lined canals 75 to 90%, pipes 95%. Armenia today: more than 90% surface irrigation, canal losses 20 to 67% (World Bank 2024 and 2026).
River forecast, seven days ahead
Google Flood Hub shows AI forecasts for river gauges. It cannot be embedded, so each row opens the map on that river. Blue dots are gauges: click one, read the seven-day line.
Coverage: river basins in more than 150 countries, forecasts up to 7 days ahead for rivers and 24 hours for flash floods, updated daily, free. Source: Google Research, 2025.
Poland
The same for home. Compare a mountain river in Armenia with a lowland one in Silesia: how far ahead does the forecast reach, how fast does it change?
Leak test at the water meter
Read the meter last thing at night and first thing in the morning, with nothing running in between. If it moved, the building leaks. Use the timer or type the readings.
Default tariff: Veolia Jur 2025, 200.42 AMD per m³ for water and wastewater (180 AMD for vulnerable households), set by the Public Services Regulatory Commission. The PLN figure is a typical Polish city rate. A dripping tap wastes 5 to 20 litres a day, a running toilet 200 to 1,000.
Result
Leak detective
A week of hourly meter readings from a school. Somewhere a leak may start. Find it by eye, then let the rule find it: the smallest flow of each night should be zero, and every hour should look like the same hour on other days.
The rule is the one water utilities use, in miniature: minimum night flow between 1 and 4 am, and a robust z-score (median and median absolute deviation) of each hour against the same hour on other days. Real utilities run the same idea on thousands of meters with machine learning on top; the principle is identical.
The water behind your week
Type what you eat, drink and buy in a typical week. The litres are the global average water needed to grow, feed and make each item, not the water from your tap. Your entries stay in this browser.
Factors: Mekonnen and Hoekstra, The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products (2011) and of farm animals and animal products (2012), global averages as published by the Water Footprint Network; cotton shirt and jeans: Water Footprint Network product gallery; smartphone: Friends of the Earth, Mind your step (2015). The three sketches are rough starting points to edit, not statistics.
Your week
One drop is 100 litres. Blue food, dark blue drinks, orange clothes, green phone.
Compared with the sketches
Ten questions from the presentation. Score: 10 points for a guess within 10% of the truth, fewer the further away. Run it on a projector with the group shouting guesses, then reveal.
About Water Lab
A companion to the presentation "Armenia's water" from the Water Management training course for youth workers from Poland and Armenia, Yerevan, 11 to 16 September 2026. Organised by Zielone Śląskie with Caucasian Social Innovation Network and the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs, under the Erasmus+ accreditation of Zielone Śląskie.
- Satellite imagesNASA Worldview snapshot service, VIIRS NOAA-20 and Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2. Public domain.
- MapOpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) through Leaflet. Positions from OSM Nominatim, two marked as approximate.
- StatisticsStatistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia, ArmStatBank tables EE-c2, EE-c3, EE-c7, fetched 13 September 2026.
- Lake balance and climateEcoportal Armenia; Preprints.org 2026, Crop water consumption at Lake Sevan; Fourth National Communication to the UNFCCC, 2020.
- IrrigationFAO Irrigation Water Management Training Manuals; World Bank, Armenia water security assessment 2024.
- ForecastsGoogle Flood Hub, Google Research. ECMWF open charts. Copernicus GloFAS.
- Water footprintsMekonnen and Hoekstra 2011 and 2012 via the Water Footprint Network; Friends of the Earth 2015 for the phone.
- TariffPublic Services Regulatory Commission of Armenia, 2025 tariff of Veolia Jur.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. The leak timer, your footprint entries and the quiz score are stored locally so you can come back to them.
Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Foundation for the Development of the Education System (FRSE). Neither the European Union nor FRSE can be held responsible for them.