Decision support system (DSS) for integrated water resources management in Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Making decisions on water resources management and planning is a complex task due involvement of multiple social, economical and environmental issues. An appropriate Decision Support System (DSS) tool capable of handling huge temporal and spatial data, equipped with reliable hydrological and statistical models, analyze multi-criteria optimal scenarios and have user friendly interfaces could be the facilitating tool for decision makers to address water resources related issues, solve problem and make appropriate decision. The present paper describes the development of DSS in Madhya Pradesh (MP) for the upper Wainganga river basin to support decisions to address range of water resources problems in the basin. The DSS project was implemented in MP under the Hydrology Project Phase-II (HP-II) program of Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India funded by World Bank. Under the DSS project, the DSS (Planning) generic software was developed which was then customized using historical hydrometeorological, groundwater levels, demographic, agricultural, reservoir, water bodies, structures and other information and data of Wainganga basin. Various scenarios addressing critical hydrological issues such as sub-basin wise water availability assessment, impact assessment of the canal infrastructure rehabilitation, efficient reservoir operations, seasonal groundwater planning were developed considering the Wainganga river basin as a management unit. The Mike Basin and DSS software were found to be a powerful tool to generate number of possible hydrological scenarios with alternate solutions which may enables the decision makers to analyze and chose the best one to execute. The DSS was tested to analyze the long term data and proved to be the best tool for addressing complex issues and making quick decision. However, efforts need to be focused on improving the effectiveness of DSS, its applicability, sustainability and utility in other basins of the state for development, optimization, planning and management of water resources.