Climate Variability and Change—Hydrological Impacts (Proceedings of the Fifth FRIEND World Conference held at Havana, Cuba, November 2006), IAHS Publ. 308, 2006, 3–9.

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FRIEND: key achievements and opportunities in international co-operation

ALAN GUSTARD¹ & MIKE BONELL²

1 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB, UK

agu@ceh.ac.uk

2 Former Chief of Section UNESCO Division of Water Sciences, 1 rue Miollis, F-75732 Paris, France

Abstract This paper introduces the key objectives of the FRIEND (Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data) 2006 Conference (Demuth et al., 2006). These are to review progress, to establish new research priorities and to identify opportunities to increase co-operation with related international initiatives. Understanding natural and human induced impacts on hydrological regimes and predicting both floods and low flows at gauged and ungauged sites continue to be the key FRIEND objectives. FRIEND initially focussed on research, however, capacity building including software and data base development, training courses, the publication of operational guidance and text books and support to MSc and PhD students have now become a major component of FRIEND activities. The paper reviews key FRIEND achievements since its inception in 1985 and advances proposals of how co-operation with allied international programmes may be improved.

Key words international co-operation; FRIEND; HELP; PUB; capacity building; networks; hydrological processes; extremes; prediction; forecasting

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