Tehran, Iran, June 25
Trend:
The 48th Iran-Azerbaijan joint commission meeting on utilizing Aras River water and energy sources was held for three days at Baku and Nakhchivan in Azerbaijan.
Managing director of Iran Energy Ministry for border rivers and joint water sources Isa Bozorgzadeh held talks with the Azeri officials.
"The joint meeting to utilize water and energy sources of Aras River is being held annually between Iran and Azerbaijan. The sides agreed on how to utilize Aras Dam and Mil-o-Moghan Dam water for a year," said Isa Bozorgzadeh in an interview to Trend.
"Two sides discussed how much water should be released to Aras and how much water each side shall have," he said.
"The positive move this year was additional article to the agreement, which implies transformation the traditional ways to electronic system callled Decision Support System (DSS)," he added. "DSS is a modern technology to monitor the river in order to find and implement the best decision," he noted.
"We decided to use Hydrometric Station and it is expected that stations will be equipped with data logger to collect information from river and send it to Tehran and Baku," he added. "We want to establish another monitoring system of Extreme Hydrological Event Forecast that will forecast both flood and drought. The system is expected to be installed alongside DSS to serve as an alarming flood and drought system of Aras River," he said.
Answering to the question whether the contractor for project has been chosen, he said, "The contractor has not been chosen; it is expected to be announced at the 50th annual joint meeting of the joint commission. The basic agreement has been concluded, and we intend to operate the DSS systems for alarming flood and drought by 2021. The project is foreseen to last for two years."
The 48th Iran-Azerbaijan joint commission meeting on utilizing Aras river marks half a century technical cooperation between the two countries .