A Systems-Based Generic Decision Support System Application to Urban Water Management

In the field of environmental management, inefficient piecemeal sectorial approaches are still widespread, particularly in water resources management, where concerns and decisions are usually split among a set of rather weakly linked stakeholders. Planning and management problems to be addressed are in most cases complex and need to be tackled in a global, integrated and holistic way, including information from the different areas of science and knowledge from the various stakeholders. Therefore, the sharing and integration of data, knowledge and models has become a major issue. A lot of effort has been made in recent years to develop such integrative tools, including information systems (IS), decision support systems (DSS) or integrated modelling frameworks (IMF). Although these tools achieved great progress in terms of linkages, there is currently no environment providing a full integration of the various kinds of data, models, and their visualisation. This is the general issue tackled by the present thesis, with developments based on a semantic, systemic formalism, and applications focusing on water management issues. The first development step taken was the creation of a systemic description of water management. Albeit the various aspects of water management are abundantly documented and well-known, an integrated description including interconnections was lacking. Therefore, a graphic representation of interconnected system elements annotated with definitions was created. This innovative result constitutes an ontology (a formal representation of a knowledge domain) providing a robust reference and a fairly exhaustive reminder of the complexity of the water management field, including transdisciplinary aspects. In the second step, a data model was created, based on the new SYSMOD language. The latter proposes a new graphical language uniting the ontological and systemic approaches, with a strong emphasis on interactions. Whereas existing data models are generally specific to a field or designed for a target application, this new data model is generic and transdisciplinary. It can handle any kind of systemically organised data, which potentially includes any sort of environmental data. To visualise and manage the systems-based, generic data stored within the database (created on the basis of the generic data model) a new kind of visualisation was developed, proposing diagrams of interconnected nodes. Whereas existing information systems are often data warehouses without a user-friendly graphical user interface, or geographic information systems focussing on spatial data, this new diagram visualisation proposes views including spatial and non-spatial system elements (such as lakes, power plants, stakeholders or laws) interconnected by interactions (such as fluxes or influences). Bound to the database, the tool was called an "information system on the system" (ISS). It provides a way of graphically managing and integrating the systemically organised, generic, transdisciplinary data. Furthermore, the systems approach fosters the apprehension and communication of complex situations in a holistic way (involving many different elements, influences and interactions from various fields), through their representation into thematic views. In complement to the diagram visualisation, a reporting tool was developed to display the data linked to system elements (numeric values, comments, files, etc.) in a web-browser fashion. To interoperate with external models, another module was developed on the top of the ISS. Finally, a fully-fledged general user interface was created to integrate all the previous developments into a single environment. To visualise the different facets of system elements, a geographic and a chart view were added, in complement to the reporting view. This final tool was called the generic decision support system (GenDSS), as its application to given situations can give rise to a series of views and linkages to models, thereby providing specific DSS functionalities for these situations. The successive developments were tested in Birmingham (United Kingdom). Test results indicated that the GenDSS is currently limited to managing a few hundred elements; beyond this quantity, the loading times and the user interface reactivity can become long and unresponsive. On the other hand, the application also demonstrated the strengths of the GenDSS which provides an innovative integrated solution to centralise transdisciplinary data in various formats (e.g. numeric values, texts, geometries, files), to holistically describe situations using complementary visualisations, and to test scenarios using externally-linked models. Thus, the GenDSS may prove an adequately versatile solution for large institutions or enterprises dealing with complex situations, heterogeneous and transdisciplinary data, and where requirements are continuously evolving, such as: a car manufacturing corporation (which would involve several different production and research sites in different countries with different regulations), a hospital, or a strategic environmental planning network (where the tool could help to break the transdisciplinary, sectorial barriers). In the case of water, the GenDSS system could prove very useful to achieve a truly integrated water management approach.

A Systems Modelling Framework to Support Scenario-Based Approaches for Integrated Resources Management

Bastien Roquier

Integrated natural resources management is an emerging discipline that aims to move beyond piecemeal approaches and promote integrated actions over a wide range of disciplines and actors. One of the technical challenges of this new discipline is the integration of information from different sources and with different levels of detail. Geographic information systems (GIS) have often been used for this purpose, but they are often inadequate to represent the structure and dynamics of human and natural systems. This thesis aims to provide a new framework for modelling information in the field of integrated natural resources management. This framework relies on the development of a modelling language (called SYSMOD) that encodes the information required by the integrated management process. This language is based on the principles of systems approach and semantic integration that allow integrating, organising and sharing data from multiple knowledge domains. To use the SYSMOD language, an information system was developed in the lab of EPFL Ecohydrology. This information system – known as "Combined Water Information System (CWIS)" because of its application to water management – consists of a database and a Web application. Its user interface provides a set of tools to create: (1) systemic views based on the SYSMOD language, (2) geographical views similar to those of GIS and (3) "report" views used to display and edit data such as text, files, images or numerical values. CWIS was subsequently enhanced to manage scenario data and therefore provide support for scenario planning. Scenarios in strategic planning help to identify the impact of the most uncertain and important factors, and thus promotes the development of strategies adapted to several possible futures. In this context, CWIS has been extended to integrate the concepts of uncertainty and data provenance, to characterise the information validity and trace the sources of data. Most of the time, the creation of scenarios and strategies requires data that can be provided only through simulations. Consequently, a modelling approach has been developed to enable the integration of mathematical models with CWIS. The particularity of this approach is to combine in a single method the concepts of model integration, uncertainty and data provenance to provide detailed results that highlight the risks and uncertainties associated with the scenarios and strategies. CWIS was applied in a series of case studies, in particular the management of water resources in Alexandria (Egypt). CWIS, and in general the framework that was used in its development, have proved to be powerful tools to handle the different types of information in a holistic and transdisciplinary way. This thesis proved that scenario planning, systems thinking, semantic integration and model integration are essential aspects to be considered in the development of tools for integrated natural resources management.

EPFL2011

Towards an information system on the water system

André Mermoud, Bastien Roquier, Colin Schenk

Integrated water resources management is generally considered a relevant methodology given the pressing necessity to use water in a sustainable manner. However, its application framework still needs refinements. As a first step towards the creation of such an improved framework, a system model for water management has been proposed, including a broad view upon the elements involved directly or indirectly (such as the energy, the public health or the housing conditions) in water management. The model may be applied to large entities such as regions or cities. This could lead to the creation of “information systems about the system”, systemic views with access to detailed data regarding the water-related infrastructures, ecosystem, natural and human resources, and legislative context, including relationships between these elements.

2007

Optimisation du système d’assainissement des eaux urbaines Réseau-STEP-Milieu récepteur par une approche de gestion intégrée

Jean-Baptiste Razurel

Water management is a recurring problem that has occupied mankind for years. Nowadays, the multiple stakeholders involved in this management have the willingness to cooperate to make it more integrated and take into consideration all social, economic and environmental components across an ideal functional unit which is the hydrological watershed. The urban wastewater system plays a central role because of its triple dimension Sewer, Wastewater treatment plant, Receiving water and well often determines the quality of the water on which depend many other sectors. Insurance that the system is in a good health allows having a functional and efficient water resources management. This work explores the possibilities of optimization of the urban wastewater system by the establishment of an integrated management which takes into account the three subsystems. For this, an understanding of the process of optimization and the knowledge about the conventionally used algorithms is deepened. Furthermore the importance of modeling and real time control for the improvement of knowledge and decision making is emphasized by a review of the available tools involved in concrete examples. An approach of integrated management of the urban wastewater system is proposed, focusing on two aspects : the identification of the critical points of the system by analyzing performance indicators and the implementation of the optimization process. This approach is applied to a case study and allows highlighting the presence of important overflows at a pumping station due to the infiltration of parasitic clean water. At this problematic station the optimization process is applied with the help of CVX tool on matlab. This optimization reduces spills using existing infrastructure while following sizing, economic and environmental constraints established by the system. This study shows that improvement of the urban wastewater system performance by following an integrated management approach exists and can be considered in Switzerland.