e-Governance and The Sustainable Water Resources Management


Jayaprakash Nambaru1
System Analyst
Weston Solutions India Pvt Ltd
India
j.nambaru@westonsolutions.com

Narsimlu K
Sr.Software Engineer
Weston Solutions India Pvt Ltd
India

Srikanth T
Sr .Manager-IT Services
Weston Solutions India Pvt Ltd
India



Abstract:
Coordinated and conjunctive use of all water - by location (surface, ground) by users (rural, urban, peri-urban), or by use (domestic, irrigation, industrial and institutional) – is a working definition of integrated water resource management (IWRM). But it refers to basin-level management on the basis of watersheds (geographically, the area where water drains to a common point), although inter-basin transfers are sometimes needed, and carried out.

There are different factors that affect sustainability of water supply services, ranging from technical and natural resources issues, to institutional and financial. Without adequate attention to all aspects of system sustainability, with adaptive management to anticipate problems and take innovative steps to tackle change. The Water Board Authorities collects, analyzes, maintains, and provides water related information for ensuring the appropriate management and regulation of State’s water resources. There is a need for the Water Board Authorities and Board of Control to provide for the general supervision and protection of both inter- and intra-state waters of the state. This includes the appropriation, distribution, and application to beneficial use of water as provided under the prior appropriation doctrine, and to maintain the flexibility within that framework to meet the changing needs of the citizens of the State.

The GIS system is integrated seamlessly with the workflow management while synchronizing the Spatial and non spatial data. The system supports tributaries and spatial information of streams and the Hydrographer’s reports. All the stakeholders of the system are empowered with easy access and tracking of the water right permits and applications.

In this paper the Author presents an Enterprise Permitting and Geographic Information System that results in an efficient and effective way of processing permits and managing the State’s water rights.

Introduction:
The goal of this paper is to provide Sustainable approach for water resource management and automation of the work flow process to meet the goals and mission of the concerned Regulating Body.

Sustainable Development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The Regulatory Body’s goal is to provide the proper regulation, administration, management, and protection of the waters of the state. The Mission of the Regulatory Body is to provide for the general supervision and protection of both inter- and intra-state waters of both the surface and ground water resources of the state. This includes the appropriation, distribution, and application to beneficial use of water as provided under the prior appropriation doctrine, and to maintain the flexibility within that framework to meet the changing needs of the citizens.

The Regulatory Body collects, analyzes, maintains, and provides water related information for ensuring the appropriate management and regulation of regional water resources. Water rights can be issued to anyone who plans to make beneficial use of the water. Recognized beneficial uses include: irrigation, municipal, industrial, power generation, recreational, stock, domestic, pollution control, in-stream flows, and miscellaneous. Water rights holders are limited to withdrawals necessary for the purpose.

The Regulatory body is responsible for ensuring the safety and structural integrity of water storage facilities in the state. The Regulatory body is empowered to require driller's reports and water use reports, create well spacing requirements and well construction standards, and require wells to be sealed. Automation of this entire responsibility and empowering the process at each stage with interactive GIS support enables the system to be sustainable and hassle free.

Proposed System:
Proposed Permitting System makes the whole process of applying and maintaining water rights online. Permitting System facilitates citizens to apply and manage water permits, while the staff can use Permitting System to process, approve and manage water rights.

This application supports the complete functionality of the Regulatory body’s Permitting Process. The proposed system facilitates GIS enabled process where the user is controlled to apply for water rights in the specific zones allowed by the department. Spatial intelligence is used to imply the regulatory conditions and guidelines during the life cycle of Permitting from applying to the Approvals. The system integrates Water Rights with Document management system, Payment Gateway, Hydrographer’s reports, and helps in analysis, identifying redundant applications, quick inspections and forecasting planned usage of water resources. Enterprise GIS (ArcIMS) plays vital role in applying critical business rules and providing controlled permitting process.

Benefits of the System:
Functionalities of Permitting System include:
  • Online application and management of Water Rights
  • Role-based login and tracking of permits for the staff
  • Fully automated Review Work Flows as per the department process.
  • Search of Water Rights, Applications, Spatial Information, Petitions and proofs.
  • Support to tributaries and spatial information of the Streams.
  • Detailed Reporting Facility to help in fore casting and strengthening the Decision Support System.
  • Integration of Hydrographer’s reports with meter readings to the Permits and Helps in Synchronization.
The Permitting System – e-Permit for the State of Wyoming, USA: Case Study


Figure 1: E –Permit – The Permitting Safety System

The specific components of e-Permit System include:
  • Tabular and spatial database of water rights
  • Application for managing the workflow to process applications and permits
  • Document Management System.
The System allows external users (Applicants or Agents) to apply online. The application can be a new instrument of type Surface Water or Ground Water or it could be a Petition or a Proof. System allows all the stake holders of the system to access and track their applications, requests or petitions. Application process is supported with help all along the application. User is facilitated to upload the required documents, attachments, payment options, Letter generation and sending options. Letters and Reports are generated dynamically and are editable and printable for the user.


Figure 2: Reports- The Permitting Safety System(e-Permit)

The application floats across the mail boxes of the Applicant, Clerk, Technician, Supervisor and Administrator as per the work flows defined according to the Business Rules. The review process implemented in the system is in such a dynamic passion that various changes are driven by configuration changes. Hydrographer’s reports are integrated into the system and stream information is maintained and shared under controlled environment.

Enterprise GIS:


Figure 3: Enterprise GIS


Figure 4: Location Data Page

Internet GIS is a relationship between GIS and Internet. Location Data and the coordinate system conversions are published in the Web pages dynamically based on the user requirement. Scheduled tasks are setup on the servers to import data into SDE database. Map services are published using ArcIMS and are dynamically displayed as per the work flow. User is facilitated to pickup a location of the Point of Diversion and Point of Usage along with provision to generate map based reports and statistics. Maps with location information are seamlessly integrated into the e-Permit system, allowing user to interactively locate the required point of diversion etc,. with control over location specific constraints and view relevant information all along the application and review process GIS is integrated tightly into the application enhancing the ability of the user and the processing department staff towards quick inspections, decision making system support and providing System Generated Maps on the fly.


Figure 5: Wells and Springs Page

Application Architecture:


Figure 6: Application Architecture

The e-Permit System follows SOA Architecture. The application has access to Public through firewall and the staff through secure access system. The Web Server contains the User Interface components, Service Interface, Service Gateway and handles Load Balancing. Service Interface provides the solution to make the application functionality available to other applications and also ensure that interface mechanics are decoupled from the application logic. It suggests designing the application as collection of software services, each with service interface. Users of the service will interact with service interface. In the current proposed application scope of e- Permit System, Service Interfaces will expose the functionality of Business Workflows only.

In the service oriented architecture, any external service provided by an application defines a contract that all service consumers must confirm in order to access the service. This strategy enables the solution to use the services provided by external applications without impacting the rest of the application in fulfilling the contract responsibilities defined by external service. This system enables user with a payment Gateway to pay the application Fee online. Application Server communicates with document management system (DMS), Database Server and the GIS Server while processing the requests from the Web Server.

Business components, Data Access Components and Business work Flow reside on Application Server.

ESRI ArcIMS spatial services are streamed with custom requirements of the application at various stages of application. Custom Dot Net connector is used to provides service requests specific to business needs. ArcSDE Spatial services are created to perform the batch jobs on server to synchronize the permits and the feature datasets of the Point of Diversions etc.

The e-Permit System will interface with the DMS for retrieving and submitting documents. Document management system supports the integration using web services API or standard URL interface using .NET framework. SQL Server is used as the Primary Database and provides Functionality to achieve better performance, security and hosts the SDE Gateway through which spatial information is delivered.

Tools:
Weston developed web-based application on .NET platform with components of SQL Server and spatial database of water rights, a software application to manage the processing of applications and permits and a document management system. All maps and documents are stored in FileNet Content Management System. e-Permit System is built on ASP.NET, C#.NET, SQL Server 2000, FileNet P8, ArcIMS 9.1 (for HTML viewer) and ArcSDE 9.0 (for Spatial Database in SQL Server) technologies, for greater portability and easier management.

Conclusion and Discussions:
Internet GIS Capabilities are explored to the best possible extent to administer over the Water rights, Streams Maintenance, integrated Hydrographer’s report. Seamless integration of Maps in various work flows to allow user to locate the Water Rights, Streams, Points of Diversion and Points of Usage makes the application very accurate and visible. Coordinate conversion is provided for easily updating the system. Arc SDE Services are created to run as scheduled tasks on server to synchronize the Point of Diversion data between spatial and non-spatial databases.

This application opens the doors to the versatile e-Governance opportunities in various departments and becomes very apt to the current day scenario where we need to protect our Natural resources with great care and control to ensure that the future generations meet their basic needs. Hence it justifies the Sustainable water resource Management through e-Governance.