Knowledge Acquisition for the Design of Flood Management Information System: Chi River Basin, Thailand

Abstract

Thai people living along the Chi River Basin (CRB), an important river for economic and social development of the Northeast of Thailand, have long been affected by both flood and drought. These problems have not yet been solved due to a lack of knowledge sharing between responsible organizations and researchers who are the experts on CRB to monitor and control the water condition. The knowledge owned by these experts has not been captured, classified and integrated into an information system for decision making. This paper is a part of the research on the development of knowledge-based DSS for water resources management of CRB. It aimed to develop the knowledge domain and to design knowledge-based DSS architecture. The research methods included document analysis and qualitative methods by adopting Liou (1990)’s knowledge acquisition approach. Ten experts in the areas of Environmental engineering, Water resources engineering, and GIS were interviewed. The experts also took parts in the processes of developing the knowledge domain, classifying and structuring the knowledge for flood management of CRB.The results of this research were the knowledge domain and the knowledge-based DSS architecture. The knowledge was structured by following three processes of disaster management cycle, consisting of 9 domains of forecasting, 10 domains of response, 9 domains of recovery, 16 domains of Historical, 30 domains of GeoInformatic, and 6 domains of Government policy and land use.