GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) FOR WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Nagraj S Patil, A K Gosain

Abstract: Water resources projects are inherited with overlapping and at times conflicting objectives. These projects are often of varied sizes ranging from major projects with command areas of millions of hectares to very small projects implemented at the local level. Thus, in all these projects there is seldom proper coordination which is essential for ensuring collective sustainability. Integrated watershed development and management is the accepted answer but in turn requires a comprehensive framework that can enable planning process involving all the stakeholders at different levels and scales is compulsory. Such a unified hydrological framework is essential to evaluate the cause and effect of all the proposed actions within the drainage basins. The present paper describes a hydrological framework developed in the form of a Hydrologic Information System (HIS) which is intended to meet the specific information needs of the various line departments of a typical State connected with water related aspects. The HIS consist of a hydrologic information database coupled with tools for collating primary and secondary data and tools for analyzing and visualizing the data and information. The HIS also incorporates hydrological model base for indirect assessment of various entities of water balance in space and time. The framework would be maintained and updated to reflect fully the most accurate ground truth data and the infrastructure requirements for planning and management

Keywords: Hydrological Information System (HIS); WebGIS; Data Model; Web Mapping Services

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2013.0213078