Towards the improvement of water resource management by combining technologies for spatial data collection, storage, analysis and dissemination

Abstract

Water resource managers regularly deal with situations where timely, relevant information can be of significant benefit. One only needs to look at the extensive flooding in Australia in 2010 and 2011, and the associated loss of property and life, to discover why the desire for hydrologic monitoring tools is so great. When water resource managers deal with floods, they want to be able to monitor and predict water levels and direct emergency response efforts. However, flooding is not the only situation where water resources need to be monitored and analyzed (Thakur et al., 2011). To ensure appropriate water quality and supply for a region, these parameters must be regularly monitored, and appropriate entities must be alerted when certain warning thresholds are approached or broken. To study and preserve biodiversity, resource managers need access to long-term data about the environmental conditions in their study area, including any hydrologic factors that may have an impact on it. Several established and emerging technologies are currently providing experts with great benefit in managing environmental resources. In the hydrological domain, the use of Sensor Webs (SWs) in data collection provides decision makers with ever-growing amounts of relevant data and allows them to always be aware of conditions in their study area (Guru et al., 2008). These data can be supplemented with data collected using emerging mobile GIS technology and applications. Currently, a multitude of mobile platforms integrating GPS technology can support data entry through generic or dedicated applications.