An extendable experiment with GIS and ICT to make environmental data and modelling user-friendly and accessible

Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory (OWML), has been monitoring the Occoquan Reservoir and its tributary watershed in Washington DC suburb for over 40 years. OWML has also developed and maintains a state-of-the-art water quality and quantity model for the region based on seven HSPF and two CE-QUAL-W2 applications. To make the data and modelling tools easily accessible to stakeholders, OWML has embarked on an experiment to use modern Information Communication Technology (ICT) along with web-mapping systems. As a result the web-portal https://wqdata.owml.vt.edu has been developed to provide easy access to the real-time and historic water resources data for the Occoquan watershed region. Another portal is under development that will allow users from the internet to delineate land use changes through their web browsers and then analyse the impact of these land use changes by executing calibrated water resources models for the region. The technologies used to develop these portals are open-source and have a wide user-base, permitting for easy extension to other regions with water resources data or model to share. Due to reliance on the modern ICT there were some hurdles in development and maintenance of this system and several problems still exist, such as need for constant updates to keep the system relevant. Based on experience in OWML, this paper presents the design of the two portals along with some lessons learnt that may be applicable to the wider community. We have also discussed possible extensions of the system beyond Occoquan Watershed based on cloud computing and collaborative software development.