Degree of Master of

MULINO-DSS project: sustainable use of water resources

Another worldwide example of environmental modeling is the MULINO-DSS project (Giupponi 2007). This modeling has been used for sustainable use of water resources at the catchment scale. MULINO-DSS is a project funded by the European Commission and aimed to using of Decision Support System (DSS) software for integration of socio-economic and environmental modeling with geospatial information and multi-criteria analysis. In DSS software integrated modeling allows assessment of the value of quantitative indicators that can be transparent and participatory decisions.
Furthermore, integrated analysis modeling makes use of three main modules. They are

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   CEU eTD Collection
   a mathematical hydrologic model (for surface flows of water in a catchment), b) a suite of mathematical models for simulations of land use changes resulted from management scenarios, and c) a suite of mathematical models for simulation of environmental impacts connected to water pollution and ground-water quality (Giupponi 2007).
   

Giupponi (2004) notes that despite the considerable complexity of the MULINO-DSS project in terms of application of such sophisticated software incorporating hydrologic models, scenario development and multi-criteria analysis, it became quite successful. The DSS software developed by the MULINO expert group became a practical application of a decision tool for sustainable management and quality of water. Elaborated by a large group of experts with distinct backgrounds, DSS software approved itself as software allowing to carry
out complex integrated modeling in sustainable use of water resources at a catchment scale (Giupponi, Mysiak et al. 2004).

6. FLUMAGIS project on water management in Germany

The FLUMAGIS project is the next example demonstrating a successful application of environmental modeling in water management. Volk (2007) describes that this project was based on scale-specific modeling, the integration of methods for ecological and socio- economic assessment and techniques for visualization. One of the upsides of the respective project was the development of an interactive tool for the evaluation and visualization of the hydrological and ecological conditions in the Upper Ems river basin (Northwest Germany) and economic aspects of management actions.
GIS-based integrated ecological-economic modeling combining different scale of modeling, development of land use scenarios, floodplain assessment and model simulation of impacts of river basin management, and socio-economic assessment was the key part of the in this project (Volk 2007). The FLUMAGIS project was focused on integration of various simulation models in order to implement effective measures for river basin management as well as to predict the effect of proposed measures to the water quality and river habitat conditions.
As a result, the application of modeling in the FLUMAGIS project allowed decision makers to take several measures at river basin management on the different scale levels and ranked them according to their cost-efficiency (Volk 2007).

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