A GIS multi-criteria expert decision support system for water resources management

This research documents how the engineering community can effectively transfer their knowledge to enhance the quality of water resources decision-making through the use of computers. It shows that it is effective for modern engineering technologists to actively participate in the social and political processes. It also demonstrates the use of new engineering technologies and tools such as GIS, Expert Systems, and Decision Support Systems, and their applicability to solving water resources problems.;This dissertation presents a Decision Support System developed to evaluate different cropping pattern strategies used in the Eastern Nile Delta of Egypt. The computer-based Decision Support System uses a Geographical Information System to support the decision making through visualization and multi-criteria evaluation. A detailed logic for an Expert System was developed to perform the decision making process based upon information obtained from numerous experts involved in the decision making process for water resources management issues in the study area. An unbiased procedure was implemented to give environmental, ecological, economical, political, and social weights to the experts and to their multi-criteria procedures for evaluating water management strategies. A powerful user friendly interface was developed to provide the communication tool linking the decision maker's interaction with the database, the Geographical Information System, and the Expert System. The Decision Support System enables the user to view the impacts on different parameters, such as soil salinities and evapo-transpiration, due to implementing a certain water use strategy. The parameters are obtained from a simulation model for irrigation and drainage in Egypt and are stored in a database used by the Decision Support System. A graphical user interface is provided for the user to select between strategies and compare impacts of different strategies on water usages and crop production. The user can select to simultaneously view more than one strategy on the computer screen for comparison purposes. He can also view the short and long term effects of a particular strategy on a parameter by showing its distribution at successive time steps. The Decision Support System is developed using PDC PROLOG as a programming language, and it is coupled with IDRISI as a Geographic Information System tool. Every effort has been made to make it a user friendly tool for decision makers.