| In many watersheds of the Unites States, ecosystem services are not generated at their potential. The U.S. National Science Foundation has recently funded a project to overcome the deficiency of ecosystem service and provide tools such as spatial decision support system called virtual watershed (VWS) integrates agent-based programming and multi-objective evolutionary search algorithm for improving the generation of ecosystem services.;The developed web-based virtual watershed system driven by high performance computing facility is an enhancement to the previous standalone watershed system. There are several limitations for the previous system. The developed system provides additional functionalities including (1) User-friendly graphical interface for interactive multi-user operations versus the command line interface for single user operations. (2) Visual feedback for combining both geographical information and landuse pattern versus textual output. (3) A relational database management module is incorporated to store and retrieve results and user input versus traditional text file. (4) A high performance computing module based on recursive binary tree structure for efficient data partitioning, computation and communication versus a monolithic system. (5) Enable user authentication to use the VWS system and prevent unauthorized users access to the VWS system versus an absence of user authentication functionality to use the VWS system.;Thus the proposed system advances the previous VWS system to the next level---being more flexible, responsive, easier, and more efficient for computing large scale problems. A built-in model-view controller framework called struts, based on java servlet is used to design the web application. |
