Web based Hydrology and Water Resources Information System for India Deepa Chalisgaonkar Scientist ‘F’ National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee – 247 667

Introduction Water Resources management deals with technical, as well as socio-economic and ecological aspects and calls for an integrated approach. In India water resources are located in various geographical areas and several authorities are responsible for their management. Protection and sustainable use of water resources require comprehensive knowledge of the water cycle components and their spatial and temporal distribution.

It requires timely and reliable information on available water resources. It is therefore vital for the responsible organizations to establish effective and efficient water management systems. For effective water management, there must be adequate information so that prompt action can be taken.

Need for Web Based Hydrological Information System Although information systems have been developed to support many of the areas there is currently no framework for integrating the data from national to sub-regional level. A large amount of relevant information exists in various format, but it is not fully compatible and did not have a common cartographic base. Most existing hydrological information systems in India lack reliability, accessibility and timeliness. The main problems are wide gap between the tools available and employed, and involvement of many agencies, often lacking integration.

WWW Techniques WWW technology is an innovative part of modern ICT and is based on an open unstructured distributed hypermedia information system. It consists of non-linear, flexibly linked HTML documents, in which different types of WWW objects can be embedded. This allows interactive components to be integrated, besides multi-media objects like images, videos and audio sequence.

WWW Techniques… In this way, the WWW provides new possibilities and features for information presentation, documentation and exchange and sharing. The development of web-enabled Information system is the need of the day.

Advantage & Limitations of Web-based Systems Platform independent. No Installation required Thin client; maintenance is minimized. Quick and timely access, anytime, and from anywhere in the world Larger access to the products in a more structured manner However, the limitation of such applications is they need of internet connectivity, data security aspects, virus and unautherised access.  

About HWRIS Package HWRIS presents India’s hydrological information via the web. The information includes maps, diagrams and text describing the hydrology and water resources of India from national to river basin/sub-basin level in space and time. This system also includes associated variables such as soil, landuse, population, legal framework and institutions etc.

About the Software The main objectives are to transfer basic information for water resource planning, to offer a modern instrument for and to present hydrological information from a nationwide perspective for a broad spectrum of users including hydrologists, planners, hydraulic engineers, consultants etc. The main advantage is to have one common efficient hydrological information system for the country.

Design Aspects The fundamental design criterion for the system is to cast it as a geo-spatial, WWWeb-based information repository system. Using standard internet and Web-based programming protocols (HTML, full W3C compliance, java scripting), it has full portability. Through straightforward GUIs and geo-spatial map retrieval, the computer codes are transparent to the users, thus making the system highly user-friendly.

Demonstration of HWRIS

The HWRIS is a comprehensive, reliable, user-friendly, easily accessible and web-based information system with emphasis on : Graphical visualisation on maps by users for identifying/selecting required information Offline and web-based options Comprehensive hydrological data libraries Such a system will be useful to support decision making to address the water management issues in a comprehensive manner.

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