Amgad Elmahdi

GIS And Multi-Criteria Evaluation: Robust Tools for Integrated Water Resources Management

Abstract Integrated water resources planning and management are considered very complex issues. These issues are usually addressed through the multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary and hierarchal decomposition approaches. In general, integrated resource management indicates the consideration of water, social, socio-economic, economic and environmental issues. The current study aims at merging the GIS and Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) techniques for the integrated water resource management of a cropped area. An area of about 120,000 Hectares located in the Northern Nile River Delta area with a coastal zone on the Mediterranean was selected and GIS was applied to represent the areas different environment, social, economic, and water factors. Different randomization cropping pattern distribution scenarios were proposed. Through the merging of GIS and MCE approaches, three scenarios were run and evaluated at three different levels: farm, canal catchment area and whole area. This merging resulted in a very powerful tool for the evaluation of different plans. The merging of GIS and MCE really facilitated the decision making process for these types of integrated water management problems.

System dynamics and auto-calibration framework for NSM model: Murrumbidgee River

Water sharing management is the major problem for water resources and irrigation management decision makers. However, irrigation systems are very complex and interconnected, posing significant difficulties in managing irrigation economically and environmentally. Therefore, it is imperative that innovative modelling approaches are employed to deal with the feedback loops inherent in these systems. Through the application of a system dynamics approach, a Network Simulation Model (NSM) was developed. The purpose of the NSM is to measure and identify the change in economic and environmental outputs of various allocations and demand scenarios. The aim of this study is to examine the use of two methods of auto calibration (single objective and multiobjective) over a variety of climatic and hydrological conditions. These methods have been compared and applied to three periods of calibration and validation using seven performance criteria. Results indicate that multiobjective method yields better identifiable parameters and an improved model structure

Development of a GIS-based decision support tool and assessment of Nile River water quality

The objective of this paper is to develop and present a GIS-based and software tool capable of data management, data visualisation, and data analysis. The developed software is proved to be a good tool in the initial assessment of the quality status of the Nile river water quality. In addition a Graphical User Interface (GUI) was fully designed and implemented to make the GIS tool very easy and handy for the decision maker. Spatial analysis and visualisation of water quality data can be easily presented through the interface. It is concluded that water quality along the main stem is much better than the quality along the two main branches, where more violations are observed.