Thomas Maurer has a background of a civil engineer with a specialization in hydraulic engineering, hydrology and numerical modelling. In 1997 he earned a PhD from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in the field of hydrology, dealing with transport of water and matter in small rural watersheds. From 1998 he gained practical experiences in an engineering consultant company in the field of hydroinformatics before he changed to his current position as Head of the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) in 2000.

The GRDC is acting under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and is supported by WMO Resolutions 21 (Cg XII, 1995) and 25 (Cg XIII, 1999). Its prime task is to maintain, extend and promote a global database on river discharge aimed at supporting international organisations and programmes by serving essential data and products to the international hydrological and climatological research and assessment community in their endeavour to better understand the earth system. The GRDC was established at the Federal Institute of Hydrology in 1988. The National Hydrological and Meteorological Services of the 187 member states of WMO are the principal data providers for GRDC.

Contact: Dr Thomas Maurer, Head, Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) in the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG), P.O. Box 20 02 53, 56002 Koblenz, Germany, phone +49 261 1306-5224, fax +49 261 1306-5280, email thomas.maurer@bafg.de, web http://grdc.bafg.de