Development of a MIS for River Water Quality Data Analysis Case Study: The Karoon and Dez Rivers

Management Information Systems (MIS) are efficient tools for analyzing the structural problems in water resources and environmental systems management. This paper presents a MIS for river water quality data analysis. The MIS includes six modules, namely Data Management, Data Validation, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Water Quality Zoning, Water Quality Simulation, and Non-point Loads Estimation. The management of the data banks, statistical analysis and preparing different reports are the main tasks of the Data Management module. The Data Validation module uses statistical methods such as correlation analyses to verify and validate the input data related to the river water quantity and quality. Ranking pollution sources and determining their shares in river water pollution is done using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) module. The Water Quality Zoning module classifies the river reaches considering the concentration of different water quality variables. This module uses the fuzzy clustering method. In the proposed MIS, a river water quality simulation model is also used for determining the spatial and temporal variation of the water quality constituents in a river system. Finally, the characteristics of the non-point pollution sources are estimated using the Nonpoint Loads Estimation module. The proposed MIS has been used for water quality data analysis in the Karoon- Dez River system in southwestern part of Iran. The results show that the MIS can effectively support decision-makers in managing water quality in this river system.