Integrated Water Resources Management

I would like to try and address a few questions about model documentation. This is often said to be an important part of building models for Integrated Water Resources Management because there are usually a lot of people involved from various disciplines and backgrounds. Typically you will see two different forms of documentation out there, including user documentation and programmer documentation. The user documentation is usually created to assist the end user interact with the input controls and view the results. The latter is usually there to help the user and/or programmer how the program actually works. So, first and foremost: What is model documentation? Model documentation is written text that accompanies the computer model. It either explains how it operates or how to use it or both, and may mean different things to people in different roles (Wikipedia, 2011). Why do people think documentation is important? The US Army Corps of Engineers (which happens to develop som...

An important element of IWRM modeling is management and processing of data. Data is the fundamental key to a successful representation of a system. Without proper data representation, the model is lost. I decided to do a quick search to see what people are using today. Doing simple Google searches on the various tools, I found HEC-DSSVue and Hydstra to be the most popular (assuming Internet search returns is a measure of popularity). Here are the search results: HEC-DSSVue => 320 unique results Hydstra => 390 unique results Aquarius => 100 unique results In looking at scholarly documents online, I was able to compare the 3 tools (shown above) by counting the different kinds of models these were used for. HEC-DSSVue seems to have been used most often for water resources and flood modeling, Aquarius for water resources and operations models, and Hydstra for water quality and runoff models. Table 1 summarizes the results from this comparison. As part of my research, I p...

Integrated Water Management (IWRM) is the practice of making decisions and taking actions while considering multiple viewpoints of how water should be managed ( www.waterencyclopedia.com , 2010). IWRM has been defined by the Technical Committee of the Global Water Partnership  (GWP) as "a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. IWRM is a systematic process for the sustainable development, allocation and monitoring of water resource use in the context of social, economic and environmental objectives. IWRM is based on the understanding that water resources are an integral component of the ecosystem, a natural resource, and a social and economic good. Typical components of this framework are shown in the figure below. IWRM is a way to plan for and manage water resources wi...