Web-Based Spatial Decision Support System and Watershed Management with a Case Study

In order to maintain a proper balance between development pressure and water resources protection, and also to improve public participation, efficient tools and techniques for soil and water conservation projects are needed. This paper describes the development and application of a web-based watershed management spatial decision support system, WebWMPI. The WebWMPI uses the Watershed Management Priority Indices (WMPI) approach which is a prioritizing method for watershed management planning and it integrates land use/cover, hydrological data, soils, slope, roads, and other spatial data. The land is divided into three categories: Conservation Priority Index (CPI) land, Restoration Priority Index (RPI) land, and Stormwater Management Priority Index (SMPI) land. Within each category, spatial factors are rated based on their influence on water resources and critical areas can be identified for soil conservation, water quality protection and improvement. The WebWMPI has user-friendly client side graphical interfaces which enable the public to interactively run the server side Geographic Information System to evaluate different scenarios for watershed planning and management. The system was applied for Dry Run Creek watershed (Cedar Falls, Iowa, US) as a demonstration and it can be easily used in other watersheds to prioritize crucial areas and to increase public participation for soil and water conservation projects

Evaluation Of An Open-Source Collaborative WebGIS Prototype In Risk Management With Students

Over the past decades, advancements in web services and web-based geospatial technologies have led to increasing delivery, access and analysis of rich spatial information over the web. With the use of open access data and open-source technology, it has become possible to make better, transparent and informed decisions for policy and decision makers. Under the framework of the European Marie Curie CHANGES project, a prototype web-based collaborative decision support platform was developed for the evaluation and selection of risk management strategies, mainly targeting flood and landslide hazards. The design of the conceptual framework was based on the initial feedback and observations obtained from field visits and stakeholder meetings of the case study areas of the project. A three-tier client-server architecture backed up by Boundless (OpenGeo) was applied with its client side development environment for rapid prototyping. The developed prototype was tested with university students to obtain feedback on the conceptual and technical aspects of the platform as well as to analyze how the application of interactive tools in the exercise could assist students in studying and understanding risk management. During the exercise, different roles (authorities, technicians, community) were assigned to each group of students for identification and selection of risk mitigation measures in the study area: Cucco village located in MalborghettoValbruna commune of North- Eastern Italy. Data were collected by means of written feedback forms on specific aspects of the platform and the exercise. A subsequent analysis of the feedback reveals that students with previous experience in GIS (Geographical Information Systems) responded positively and showed interests in performing exercises with such kinds of interactive tools for learning, compared to the ones with fewer or no GIS experience. These results also show that the prototype is useful and supportive as a decision support tool in risk management while userfriendliness, interactivity and practical aspects of the platform could be further improved

PENGARUH SISTEM INFORMASI MANAJEMEN LINGKUNGAN TERHADAP GOOD GOVERMENT GOVERNANCE

An Environmental Management Information System is an information system that produces outputs using inputs that can process all the information needed to meet the organization's objectives for management activities. A good Environmental Management Information System is able to balance the costs and benefits to be gained, meaning an environmental management information system that will save costs, increase revenue that arises from very useful information. The organization must realize that meticulous technology can design and implement an environmental management information system to suit its desires in determining cost limits from the point of benefit to be obtained, then the resulting Environmental Management Information System will provide benefits and money. Integrated and flexible information technology is an environmental management information system tool, in information processing in order to design an environmental management information system that is able to serve the main task. The purpose of the environmental management information system is to meet the general information needs of all managers in the company or within the organizational subunits of the company. The environmental management information system provides users with information in the form of reports and outputs from various mathematical simulation models. The results of this study indicate that the environmental management information system can provide good or bad changes in Good Government Governance that are managed by the company. This research was conducted at PT Bukit Asam Indonesia located in South Sumatra. Keywords: Environmental Management Information System, Good Government Governanc

Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) for Sustainable Development: A Conceptual Overview

Environmental management information systems (EMIS) is defined as \u27organizational-technical systems for systematically obtaining, processing, and making available relevant environmental information available in companies\u27. Such systems evolved out of a growing need to manage environmental information in response to internal and external pressures such as regulations, consumers, stockholders, and changes in the business environments. While over the past decade EMIS have proliferated in the corporate landscape, these systems have received little attention within the information systems research community as whole. The objective of this paper is to serve as a tutorial providing a conceptual overview of EMIS, highlighting organizational and technical issues, as well as research opportunities. In this paper we suggest that there are significant and relatively untapped research synergies existing between information systems and environmental management for sustainable development at the organizational and technical levels

Web-based Spatial Decision Support Systems (WebSDSS): Evolution, Architecture, Examples and Challenges

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS), which support spatial analysis and decision making, are currently receiving much attention. Research on SDSS originated from two distinct sources, namely, the GIS community and the DSS community. The synergy between these two research groups has lead to the adoption of state of the art technical solutions and the development of sophisticated SDSS that satisfy the needs of geographers and top-level decision makers. Recently, the Web has added a new dimension to SDSS and Web-based SDSS (WebSDSS) that are being developed in a number of application domains. This article provides an overview of the emergence of SDSS, its architecture and applications, and discusses some of the enabling technologies and research challenges for future SDSS development and deployment

Web-based PPGIS application for participatory spatial planning in context of bikeability

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe spatial planning processes are complex and require public participation to get insights about important problems and development of the neighborhood from the communities during final decision-making. The traditional participatory methods offer limited two-way communication just inform the public rather than to obtain suggestions from them and few public can participate due to time & location restrictions. Due to low public empowerment, they do not know how their participation can influence the spatial planning and decision-making process. This study tries to design and develop the web-based Public Participation GIS application with the integration of the internet, public participation, and GIS technologies to increase public participation during spatial planning and decision-making to overcome the limitations of traditional participatory methods. The web-based PPGIS application development is based on open-source technologies and allows the participants to visualize spatial data layer, perform spatial analyses and contribute to increasing and improving the bikeability of the city. The user study experiment is conducted to evaluate the usability and usefulness of the application. The evaluation results show that the web-based PPGIS application is easy to use with a System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 84.6 and an effective approach to increase public engagement and give suggestions on the spatial planning process and decision making

Hydrological Characterization of a Riparian Vegetation Zone Using High Resolution Multi-Spectral Airborne Imagery

The Middle Rio Grande River (MRGR) is the main source of fresh water for the state of New Mexico. Located in an arid area with scarce local water resources, this has led to extensive diversions of river water to supply the high demand from municipalities and irrigated agricultural activities. The extensive water diversions over the last few decades have affected the composition of the native riparian vegetation by decreasing the area of cottonwood and coyote willow and increasing the spread of invasive species such as Tamarisk and Russian Olives, harmful to the river system, due to their high transpiration rates, which affect the river aquatic system. The need to study the river hydrological processes and their relation with its health is important to preserve the river ecosystem. To be able to do that a detailed vegetation map was produced using a Utah State University airborne remote sensing system for 286 km of river reach. Also a groundwater model was built in ArcGIS environment which has the ability to estimate soil water potential in the root zone and above the modeled water table. The Modified Penman- Monteith empirical equation was used in the ArcGIS environment to estimate riparian vegetation ET, taking advantage of the detailed vegetation map and spatial soil water potential layers. Vegetation water use per linear river reach was estimated to help decision makers to better manage and release the amount of water that keeps a sound river ecosystem and to support agricultural activities

Developing a Prototype Web-based Application for Non-Point Source Pollution Assessment in the Songtao Watershed, Hainan, China

The Songtao reservoir, located in the center of Hainan province, is one of the ten biggest reservoirs in China. Since agriculture is the main industry in the watershed, non-point source (NPS) pollution is the primary pollutant source affecting water quality in the reservoir. A scientific approach is required to assess NPS pollution in the Songtao watershed in order to support planning and decision making process related to land use and water resource management. This study compared several commonly used NPS hydrological models in order to identify a suitable model for NPS pollution analysis in the Songtao reservoir. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was selected as the model to be used in this research. In order to put the SWAT model to practical use, a prototype web-based application was developed to help officers in local government in China to use the SWAT model in their decision making process. In addition, spatial and non spatial data about the Songtao watershed area were collected for the SWAT model. Despite data limitations, ArcSWAT software was employed to develop relative scenarios to assess the NPS pollution in the reservoir. One land use scenario was developed to identify an environmentally sensitive basin in the Songtao watershed and the other was created to demonstrate the consequences of over-exploiting forest land in local area. The limitations of using SWAT model in Hainan province were discussed. Further research opportunities such as data collection and model calibration and validation were identified. In addition, possible improvements to the web-based application were presented

Spatial Decision Support System for Urban Streams

The change of land use from rural to urban tends to radically alter the implicated streams with many symptoms of the “urban stream syndrome”. The key driver of the syndrome is hydrologic change; the product of increased imperviousness and efficient conveyance and characterized by frequent larger flows, increases in peak flows, and seasonal shifts in flood occurrence. Streams are unable to maintain stability due to an imbalance between sediment transport processes and the flow energy, which leads to morphological alteration, ecological degradation and a reduced capacity to support ecosystem services. Many strategies have been tried to prevent damage in or rehabilitate these urban streams. However, significant uncertainty remains about their outcomes because current practices do not consider the marginal impact of additional land use changes within a watershed or the cumulative impact of urbanization beyond the local scale. The objective of the current paper is to describe a spatial decision support system (SDSS) to predict changes in stream power under different scenarios of land use and cover change at the network scale. Change in stream power is modelled as a predictor of changes in channel stability. The SDSS is written as Python scripts and packaged as an ArcGIS toolbox for ease of use. The current framework integrates empirical relationships between discharge, drainage area and imperviousness to assess pre- and post- development impacts of urbanization along the stream networks. A sediment particle size predictive model is also developed for integration in the SDSS. A case study of an urbanizing watershed is presented to demonstrate the application of the SDSS. Continued development of the tool will allow increased use of field and site -specific model results to refine the accuracy of predictions. Cartographic displays of the spatial and temporal sensitivity of streams to urbanization can assist in decision making processes