The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : “DSS development a boon to water resources”

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Wednesday, Jul 30, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

“DSS development a boon to water resources”

Staff Reporter

As a pilot project, three river basins in State have been chosen for DSS development

Photo: R. Ragu

THROWING LIGHT: PWD Secretary (in-charge) N. S. Palaniappan explains a map of State river basins brought out as part of the Decision Support System at a workshop in Chennai on Monday. M.Louis John, Chief Engineer of State Ground Water and Surface Water Resources Data Centre, is in the picture. —

CHENNAI: The development of Decision Support Systems (DSS), an integrated information system comprising data and geographical maps of the river basins across the State, will ensure optimum use of the available resource, said N.S.Palaniappan, Secretary (incharge) to the Public Works Department.

Inaugurating a workshop on DSS (planning) under the World Bank-aided Hydrology Project Phase II organised by Water Resources Department (WRD) of the PWD here on Monday, he said the DSS would comprise details collected from various public and private stakeholders about geographical data of the particular river basin, rainfall, crop cultivation, drinking water supply schemes, population statistics and industrial use.

As a pilot project, three river basins in the State, Tamiraparani basin, Vaippar basin and Agniar basin, have been chosen to have DSS developed for integrated water resource management, Mr. Palaniappan said.

Highlighting the benefits of the DSS, he said that it would assist the policy-makers such as State water agencies and various government departments in managing ground and surface water in the basins. Such an integrated information system would eventually be extended to the other river basins in the State.

K.Nagarajan, consultant Participatory Irrigation Management Cell (WRD), said the DSS was essentially a computer model with Geographical Information System (GIS) interface. It would provide a complete and user-friendly water resources management information system to the stake holders.

Elaborating on the progress of the project, he said data collection format for the various water user agencies such as Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and Revenue department has been designed. Besides developing software for entry of data collected from other departments and training officials concerned, field surveys on the chosen basin would be conducted using GIS this year, he said.

While the DSS would be developed for drought monitoring in the Vaippar basin, the Agniar basin would have a DSS created for conjunctive use of ground and surface water.

The Tamaraparani basin identified with problems such as sea water intrusion and encroachments in waterbodies would be provided with the DSS on flood management, Mr.Nagarajan added.

M.Louis John, chief engineer of State Ground Water and Surface Water Resources Data Centre and B.Venkatesh, scientist from National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, spoke on the occasion.

Interactive session

An interactive session with representatives from various departments such as Meteorological Department and Agriculture Department also formed part of the meeting.

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