Supporting multidisciplinary model-based water management projects: a user perspective

Multidisciplinary model-based water management is a complex process. Projects that have to follow this process may encounter many problems, related to miscommunication, malpractice, misuse of the model, insufficient knowledge of the modeled problems and overselling of model capabilities. This leads to model projects, which are not transparent and difficult to audit. The knowledge-based system consists of an ontological knowledge base (KB) with ‘best modelling practices’ for teams, which members have different disciplinary backgrounds and play different roles in a project, and a Modelling Support Tool (MoST). MoST generates and presents guidelines from the KB on what to do. MoST also monitors what team members do in an electronic model journal and facilitates converting model journals into model reports for various audiences and purposes. Water managers can benefit from MoST and its KB in different ways: (1) during project set-up in defining what has to be done and finding a team to do the job, (2) at regular intervals in evaluating what has been done and planning of what has to be done, and (3) to check project progress. Modelers are guided by MoST on what to do, get access to what other team members did and helped keeping records of their work in the project. Auditors can easily follow the audit trail left in a model journal and are helped to appraise modelling projects. Stakeholders and public can be informed and consulted using MoST. In this way MoST and its KB facilitate cooperating in modelling projects and improve their quality. Parts of the technology of MoST and its KB can be reused to support other types of (simulation) modelling or even other types of processes (i.e. not focusing on modelling)