  A prerequisite for integrated land and water resources management (ILWRM) is
a holistic river basin assessment. The latter requires information and data
from different scientific disciplines but also appropriate data management
systems to store and manage historical and real time data, set up protocols
that facilitate data and information access and sharing among different
stakeholders, and triggering further collaboration among different institutions
in support of watershed-based assessment, management and planning. In West
Africa in general and especially in the transboundary Volta River basin where
different environmental data are collected and managed by different agencies in
different countries and also where data access and dissemination are very
challenging and difficult tasks, comprehensive river basin information systems
are required. This paper presents the Oti River Basin Information System
(OtiRBIS), a web-based data storage, management andanalysis platform that
addresses these needs and facilitates ILWRM implementation in the Kara river
basin.
