Spatial Data Warehouse Modeling at the Watershed Scale. Part 1: Design Aspects

Abstract

Gathering, analyzing and synthesizing large and complex sets of hydraulic, terrestrial, atmospheric, biological and socio-economic data are critical for any decision making process in the water sector. This paper aims to propose a practical approach for increasing the effectiveness of sustainable management of water resources within Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) framework and climate change context. The article advocates that the designed Decision Support System (DSS) is a prerequisite in proper IWRM. In fact, it offers a dedicated management system, to assist decision makers and policy makers of water in providing timely, well informed and reproducible answers to important questions, as well as transforming data into knowledge and understandable results through innovative techniques. However, to provide a Decision Support System allowing both access to geographic data needed for IWRM and steering business processes through reliable indicators, it is imperative that the system must be able to combine the geographic information system technology with Business Intelligence, so called Geo-BI (Geo-Business Intelligence). To this end, this paper presents a study that revolves around the concept of Geo-BI and aims to model a Multidimensional Decision Support System, which is a part of an extensive process of spatial data warehouse construction.