Assessing environmental consequences of water projects based on a pseudo expert system approach

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of any development project is now a part of the project analysis today. This is not only required by national and/or international legislation, but also the growing environmental awareness of societies has forced project implementers to consider any environmental consequences beforehand and take the necessary measures to mitigate adverse effects. As a project cycle may include several steps, the consideration of environmental impacts at each level is now something inevitable. Although large numbers of environmental impact assessment procedures are available, an appropriate EIA procedure that is compatible with the level must be adopted. To this end, a tailor-made procedure for water resources planning process is devised, which is a computer model for the environmental assessment of planning components such as reservoirs and abstraction schemes etc. The model provides all the necessary facilities and knowledge thereby assisting the user to evaluate a particular impact by means of generic knowledge in relation to the impact and the site characteristics. As such, the model takes a form of expert system without a proper shell being used. The intention is to use the outcomes of this model for including environmental impacts along with the economical considerations in large-scale water resources planning process.