A Web-Based Decision Support System for Assessing Regional Water-Quality Conditions and Management Actions1

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment Program has completed a number of water-quality prediction models for nitrogen and phosphorus for the conterminous United States as well as for regional areas of the nation. In addition to estimating water-quality conditions at unmonitored streams, the calibrated SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) models can be used to produce estimates of yield, flow-weighted concentration, or load of constituents in water under various land-use condition, change, or resource management scenarios. A web-based decision support infrastructure has been developed to provide access to SPARROW simulation results on stream water-quality conditions and to offer sophisticated scenario testing capabilities for research and water-quality planning via a graphical user interface with familiar controls. The SPARROW decision support system (DSS) is delivered through a web browser over an Internet connection, making it widely accessible to the public in a format that allows users to easily display water-quality conditions and to describe, test, and share modeled scenarios of future conditions. SPARROW models currently supported by the DSS are based on the modified digital versions of the 1:500,000-scale River Reach File (RF1) and 1:100,000-scale National Hydrography Dataset (medium-resolution, NHDPlus) stream networks.

Cyberinfrastructure Architecture to Support Decision Taking in Natural Resources Management

“…Basically it is composed of three main components: a repository of hydrologic time series and spatial data published as WaterML and map web services (HydroServer), a desktop client (HydroDesktop) that can be used locally to access hydrological data hosted on the server and a metadata catalog of the data services that are available on the server (HIS Central). The data is stored in a relational The SPARROW decision support system uses the SPARROW model (SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed Attributes), a source-transport model that provides the capability to predict constituent loads, concentration, and yield in streams over regional and continental spatial scales [5]. The application is developed in J2EE technology and available online but does not provide any open source software/ API that can be reused in development and research purposes.…”

Integrated environmental modeling: A vision and roadmap for the future

“…Clear momentum exists in the broader information technology domain toward storing data and tools in the Cloud. Much work has been done in IEM communities to create Web-based analysis tools and portals (e.g., Booth et al, 2011), expose large databases as web services (e.g., Goodall et al, 2008), and for creating workflows to coordinate data flow between databases, analysis tools, and models (e.g., Granell et al, 2010, Kepler, 2012 . Recent work has focused on service-oriented and resource-oriented paradigms for organizing model software architectures suggesting that model frameworks themselves could be integrating computational and data resources that are distributed across the Web , Granell et al, 2012.…”

Development of a GIS-Based Decision Support System for Diagnosis of River System Health and Restoration

“…The spatial data structure is based on spatial entities and a spatial index [30]. Spatial entity is an abstract geographical model, including points, lines and curves [34]. In a river system, infrastructures are the point entities, river course and bed are the line entities, and elevation is the curve entity.…”