DEVELOPMENT OF A DECISION SUPPORT MAPPING UTILITY FOR WATER-RESOURCES PLANNING

The optimum utilisation of water resources is essential for our continued economic development and for the preservation of our limited resource base. At present the process of resource planning is expensive and mathematically complex. This is inappropriate for assessment and comparison of multiple scenarios. The use of microcomputers and simple graphical manipulation and display techniques can assist in rapid screening of proposed plans and will result in easier interpretation of output by the decision-makers. A versatile, yet cost-efficient mapping utility has been developed as part of a decision support system to assist the decision-maker in reaching the most beneficial solution. The utility is designed for implementation on a standard IBM-compatible hardware configuration. A brief overview of the system, its capabilities and the potential applications are presented.