Which Models for Decision Support Systems? Proposal for a Methodology

Abstract

Management of water uses requests to harmonize demands and needs which are getting more and more complex and sophisticated especially with the growing urbanization. Modern cities request a larger number of services for their inhabitants and expect, at the same time, to limit investments in order to constrain the tax pressure. The need of optimization appears at various levels and request the wide spread of monitoring strategies. At the same time, urban growth mobilizes last available spaces that are frequently under the thread of natural hazards like inundations or landslides. The current situation, characterized by the fast increase of monitoring devices mainly in the urban environments, requests an integration of the modeling tools into the Information Systems (IS) that are now dedicated to the global management of urban environments and related services. Decisions Supports Systems (DSSs) that may integrated various components both for real-time monitoring and forecast through model, appear as one of the most relevant answer to the urban environment management’s expectations. The models integration is a challenging task that requests to build a global vision that ensures both technical feasibility and sustainability. As demonstrated with the AquaVar approach, several models can be orchestrated within a single environment that can address the diversity of the water related issues handled by local technical services. The models selection has to integrate the evolution of the tools and the possibility to integrate gradually new approaches and methods that are more data oriented and using the results produced from the implemented deterministic tools.