With changes in weather patterns and intensifying anthropogenic water use, there is an increasing need for spatio-temporal information on water fluxes and stocks in river basins. The assortment of satellite-derived open-access information sources on rainfall (P) and land use/land cover (LULC) is currently being expanded with the application of actual evapotranspiration (ETact) algorithms on the global scale. We demonstrate how global remotely sensed P and ETact datasets can be merged to examine hydrological processes such as storage changes and streamflow prior to applying a numerical simulation model. The study area is the Red River Basin in China in Vietnam, a generally challenging basin for remotely sensed information due to frequent cloud cover. Over this region, several satellite-based P and ETact products are compared, and performance is evaluated using rain gauge records and longer-term averaged streamflow. A method is presented for fusing multiple satellite-derived ETact estimates to generate an ensemble product that may be less susceptible, on a global basis, to errors in individual modeling approaches. Subsequently, monthly satellite-derived rainfall and ETact are combined to assess the water balance for individual subcatchments and types of land use, defined using a global land use classification improved based on auxiliary satellite data. It was found that a combination of TRMM rainfall and the ensemble ETact product is consistent with streamflow records in both space and time. It is concluded that monthly storage changes, multi-annual streamflow and water yield per LULC type in the Red River Basin can be successfully assessed based on currently available global satellite-derived products.

The transport sector is considered to be an important engine for the Dutch economy. The transport sector in the Netherlands is relatively well developed and traditionally relatively large in relation to the nation’s size. The two major transport hubs within the Dutch borders dominate the developments within transport security: the Port of Rotterdam and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. These hubs invest heavily in transport security systems and were important factors in the development of a national security strategy. This chapter focuses on one area in which the Dutch were particularly inspired to take action in order to take transport security to the next level: the National Risk Assessment. In this area, the Dutch government was ahead of EU legislation and has developed elaborate security control systems on a national level. Unfortunately, much of the documentation describing these systems is only available in Dutch or is classified. This chapter unveils some of the Dutch-language documentation so that others may benefit from it.