Web-based FOSS Environment Decision Support Systems for Odense River Basin in Denmark

Complicated model structure and time consuming simulations increase the use of models in decision making process when the stakeholders are not familiar with the tools. Therefore, the user interface (UI) design for decision support system (DSS) should not only maintain the scientific model structure but also simplify the interaction with models and the need for easy access. Nowadays, web-based techniques have been developed so fast and Web 2.0 brings the time when web-based systems challenge the desktop applications. This technology also needs to be taken into account in the DSS development for water resource management because the stakeholders are spatial distributed and the internet is the most commonly available resource. In this paper, we developed a WebDSS prototype named VisREACHER that is fully based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It is a stand-alone web page with the decision model running behind which means it offers more than a visualization system of a prepared dataset. Map-based UI with AJAX techniques give the user more flexible using experience. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model is chosen as the decision model to generate the probabilities of future scenarios is run at the client side. The advantages of using BBN are: its graphic structure can be coupled with the upstream-downstream topology very well, it is efficient and it can combine different measures at the same time. Layer structures and clickable items are the most important components in the interactive design which reduce the problem of jumping between different windows. Pure Javascript 3D popup has been built into the UI to facilitate the combinations of measures. The prototype is implemented in Chrome, Firefox and Safari browser with the stable performance. Furthermore, VisREACHER is also easy to be extended into the table touch screen environment for group decision making.