An Integrated Water Assessment Decision Support System (IWADSS) for Government Decision Makers

An Integrated Water Assessment Decision Support System (IWADSS) has been developed to aid government decision makers who deal with activities that potentially affect the water quality and aquatic ecosystem health of coastal waters. The IWADSS was produced within the Cooperative Research Centre for Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management (Coastal CRC). It is underpinned by elicited expert knowledge on water quality monitoring and modelling approaches for particular management issues. The computer-based system was designed in a generic way to be applicable for various management issues, such as licensing discharges, across different waterbody types and spatial scales. The area of water quality modelling can be highly technical and modelling expertise can be scarce or perhaps limited to particular software or model types. Furthermore, communication between decision makers and modellers is often poor. Although water quality monitoring is better established than modelling, the emphasis needs to be on clearly communicating program objectives, being more cost effective, incorporating evolving science and improving communication of results. The interconnectedness of monitoring and modelling is seldom explored. The IWADSS contains an assessment approach driven by the management context supported by detailed information on modelling and monitoring. The user specifies the management context guided by the system. IWADSS is most developed for assessments required for development approval but could be expanded in the future to better guide other management contexts, such as catchment planning or water resource management. The information contained within IWADSS is made up of knowledge bases elicited from experts on modelling and monitoring approaches developed specifically for the system. The knowledge bases provide "meta data" information on types of approaches, typical uses, the type of expertise and resources required, specific data requirements, quality assurance considerations, examples of use and links to further information. Simple categories, explanations and definitions are used to assist the user. The IWADSS and associated help system will allow the user to generate suitable assessment options or determine the suitability of a given assessment, for example with proposed development applications or licensing approvals. This paper will present an overview of the IWADSS prototype and beta version design, associated help system and knowledge bases. A description of their development will be included.