| Title: | Development of a prototype web-based decision support system for watershed management |
| Authors: | Zhang, D., X. Chen and H. Yao |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Journal: | Water |
| Volume (Issue): | 7(2) |
| Pages: | 780-793 |
| Article ID: | |
| DOI: | 10.3390/w7020780 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | interface tool and/or other software |
| Primary Application Category: | GIS interface, GIS utility, or other type of interface/utility |
| Secondary Application Category: | computational efficiency |
| Watershed Description: | 5,629 Jinjiang River in China |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Using distributed hydrological models to evaluate the effectiveness of reducing non-point source pollution by applying best management practices (BMPs) is an important support to decision making for watershed management. However, complex interfaces and time-consuming simulations of the models have largely hindered the applications of these models. We designed and developed a prototype web-based decision support system for watershed management (DSS-WMRJ), which is user friendly and supports quasi-real-time decision making. DSS-WMRJ is based on integrating an open-source Web-based
Geographical Information Systems (Web GIS) tool (Geoserver), a modeling component (SWAT, Soil and Water Assessment Tool), a cloud computing platform (Hadoop) and other open source components and libraries. In addition, a private cloud is used in an innovative manner to parallelize model simulations, which are time consuming and computationally
costly. Then, the prototype DSS-WMRJ was tested with a case study. Successful implementation and testing of the prototype DSS-WMRJ lay a good foundation to develop DSS-WMRJ into a fully-fledged tool for watershed management. DSS-WMRJ can be easily customized for use in other watersheds and is valuable for constructing other environmental
decision support systems, because of its performance, flexibility, scalability and economy. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | cloud computing; soil and water assessment tool (SWAT); Web-based Geographical Information Systems (Web GIS); decision support system for watershed management (DSS-WMRJ); best management practice (BMP) |