A decision support system for water resources planning in Egypt

Egypt’s water resources system is composed of many interacting components and interfaces with social, economic and environmental systems, which are complex and uncertain. A decision support system (DSS) is being implemented to assist water policy makers in evaluating impacts of proposed development measures, before implementation, on the integrated socio-economic and environmental water resources system. DSS predicts these impacts in terms of relevant indicators at different temporal and spatial scales. DSS is composed of three main components: a database linked to a geographic information system (GIS) to provide required data and information to the modeling component, a model component consisting of a set of sophisticated mathematical models to simulate the behavior of the surface and groundwater resources systems under different proposed measures and a graphical user interface developed under AVS/Express environment to allow running of several alternative policies as well as comparing their simulation results.