WEB-BASED WATER RESOURCES INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYTEM

Abstract

Reliable information is of utmost importance for planning and decision making. Various challenges face the water resources management sector in regard to water resources information management. The main challenges include lack of well defined processes of information flow between various organizations and different storage formats hindering proper information sharing resulting to duplication of information. At present Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA) uses emails, cds and dvds to send the data once it is collected. It is then added into existing databases at the regional or headquarters offices. The study sort to address this problem by developing a web-based water resources information management system with an aim of providing a proper water information collection, storage and dissemination platform. The proposed system is composed of three subcomponents: a single database, web-based mapping component and a website. The database provided is centralized, mapping component provides tools for data updating and visualization while the website hosts the mapping component and also provides additional information related to water resources use. To develop the system stable GIS softwares and other Open Source softwares were used. The system contained surface water, ground water and watershed protection information. Adoption of the system will aid WRMA in fulfilling its mandate of regulating water use nationally and regionally by effectively managing the valuable water resource information.