IWRA World Water Congress 2008 Montpellier France
4. Development of Water Resources and Infrastructure
Author(s): C.J.
de Zeeuw
R. Knapen
H. Scholten
A. Kassahun
N. Kukeric
J. Griffioen
M. Blind
T.T. de
Vries
L.S.Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia
G. Arampatzis
R. Moore
P.J.A. Gijsbers
(1) Alterra – Wageningen UR, the
Netherlands
(2) Wageningen University – Wageningen UR, the Netherlands
(3) TNO, the Netherlands
(4)
Institute of Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment, the Netherlands
(5) Cranfield Institute of
Technology, UK
(6) University of Exeter, UK
(7) National technical University of Athens, Greece
(8) CEH
Wallingford, UK
(9) Delft Hydraulics, the Netherlands
Keyword(s): water stress, i3S, collaborative processes, planning, decision
making, problem solving
Article: PDFAbstractIntroduction
AquaStress (2005-2009) is a
research project funded by the European Commission (EC). The project aims to deliver enhanced interdisciplinary
methodologies enabling actors at different levels to mitigate water stress problems. Both quantitative and qualitative
aspects are covered. The project is test-site and stakeholder driven, indicating that any developments are directly
related to a variety of study areas and stakeholders who actively participate in the project. Within the AquaStress
project, much effort is put in designing an “Integrated Solutions Support System”, called i3S. i3S is a software
environment that integrates data, information, knowledge and tools as being used and developed within the
AquaStress project by different partners and stakeholders.
Objective
The overall objective of i3S is to
support various steps in the collaborative process of planning, decision making and problem solving. Some of these
steps require tools for stakeholder interaction; others involve both simple and complex modelling, calculation of
water stress indicators or evaluation of effects of chosen options for water stress mitigation. The i3S has to deal with
a large variation in the knowledge and information about the different aspects of water stress in the different case
studies.
Methods
The i3S is built upon existing technologies and knowledge. Within the functional design
three components can be distinguished: data and information management, process definition and support and
providing linkable tools. To implement this functional architecture, it has been chosen to develop the different
components by different partners, making agreements on the communication and data exchange between different
components. For this purpose, some of its components will support the OpenMI standard.
In this project, a
knowledge base approach is used based on a Process Support Tool, ProST, a more generic successor of MoST.
The different phases in the planning process, as well as the different views of stakeholders and users, require such a
tailor-made approach.
Results
i3S is a web-portal application that provides entry points for the various
components of the system. These can be fact sheets on the tools and information available in the system, but where
appropriate, it will directly connect to specific web-services, or it will provide a link to stand-alone applications. i3S
brings this scientific output together as a mixture of web-based and stand-alone applications. In this paper examples
will be presented of available tools, how they interrelate and how they are used in the case study areas of the
AquaStress case study areas.
Conclusion
i3S is innovative in its way to link data, information, knowledge
and tools. This makes the collaborative process itself less dependent or hindered by the limitations and inflexibility of
many contemporary decision support tools.