Hydroinformatics

Hydroinformatics is the multidisciplinary application of information and decision support systems to address the equitable and efficient management and use of water for many different purposes. Hydroinformatics draws on and integrates hydraulics, hydrology, environmental engineering, and many other disciplines. It sees application at all points in the water cycle, from atmosphere to ocean, and in artificial interventions in that cycle such as urban drainage and water supply systems. It provides support for decision making at all levels, from governance and policy through to management and operations.

Hydroinformatics also recognises the inherently social nature of the problems of water management and of decision making processes, and it includes mechanisms towards understanding the social processes by which technologies are brought into use and how they change the water system. Since the resources to obtain and develop technological solutions affecting water collection, purification, and distribution continue to be concentrated in the hands of the minority, the need to examine these social processes are particularly acute:

"[T]he role of the hydroinformatician in this process is to create sociotechnical environments in which the transmutations necessary to provide states of social justice can be catalysed through the creation of appropriate technologies. These technologies are those that can transform data and technical information into a form of knowledge and understanding that can be assimilated by the non-technical stakeholders so that they can contribute meaningfully and responsibly to the decision-making process. Therefore, one of the aims of hydroinformatics is a completely transparent decision making process involving all stakeholders in a water infrastructure project along with the relevant professionals directed to realisations of social justice, which are understood as transcendental states of social being."

History

Growing out of the earlier discipline of computational hydraulics, the numerical simulation of water flows and related processes remains a mainstay of hydroinformatics, which encourages a focus not only on the technology but on its application in a social context.

Informatics

http://books.google.com/books?id=OWK-AQAAQBAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=Dr4PAQAAIAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=ch7lZxC6oZ8C http://books.google.com/books?id=dYDCYddq83cC

Recommended reading

• Price, Roland K.; Vojinović, Zoran (2011). "Chapter 3: Hydroinformatics". Urban Hydroinformatics: Data, Models, and Decision Support for Integrated Urban Water Management. IWA Publishing. pp. 39–61. ISBN 9781843392743. http://books.google.com/books?id=pYPNHUdJvGkC&pg=PA39. 

External links

• EuroAquae Portal
• hydroinformatics.org
• International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR)
• International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS)
• International Water Association (IWA)
• Journal of Hyrdoinformatics

Notes

This article heavily reuses content from the Wikipedia article.