Pakistan's recurring floods, chronic water shortages and increasingly unpredictable river flows are often cited as evidence that the country needs more dams – a perception which is being reinforced by the Indus Waters Treaty being held in abeyance by India. Storage is certainly important. But focusing only on storage is not enough. Pakistan also needs to become far smarter about how it measures, allocates and manages the water it already has.

Development agencies have long emphasised the need for systematic measurement of water availability, consumption and use as a prerequisite for better water planning. In Pakistan, some effort is now being made to use satellite imagery and remote sensing to manage water. But these efforts need to go much further.

At present, water-related data being gathered remain fragmented across federal institutions, provincial irrigation departments and disaster-management bodies. What Pakistan needs is an integrated national water-information architecture linking........

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