Groundwater quality management modeling using videodigitized data and interactive computer graphics

Abstract

In the last few years, interactive modeling, digital cartographic analysis, and computer graphics have become important activities in many engineering and resource management organizations. Such computer-aided water resources planning systems are becoming increasingly powerful, both computationally and graphically, and are also becoming more portable and affordable. These systems will be important aids in the synthesis and analysis of resource management plans and policies. They also will provide an improved means of communicating technical data to professional engineers and planners as well as to citizen participation groups. An important component of these interactive systems will be their use of digital, color-coded mapping. Since such mapping has long been regarded as an effective means of presenting spatially- and time-variant information associated with groundwater management problems, for example, its incorporation into the digital world of computer simulation analysis is an important step towards more effective groundwater and other resource planning. This paper very briefly reviews some of our research in the development of interactive modeling-computer graphic systems applied to groundwater quality management problems, and describes the use of videodigitized maps and other images as a means of providing low-cost, cartographic information needed for effective interactive input of geographic and other model data and for the display of model results.