Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) for Stormwater Management and Water Quality Assessment

Land use policy in the United States is a predominantly local issue (Giannotti & Arnold, 2002). The challenge is that land use policies and decisions are made by elected and appointed municipal officials (Stocker et al., 1999) whose training may not necessarily be in environmental management. Because of the critical importance of their work, and because they deal with land-use planning and regulation on a daily basis, local officials need decision tools that can allow them to place case-by-case land-use decisions within the broader context of the watershed. These land use managers need tools for assisting them to evaluate environmental impacts of their land-use decisions, visualize alternative scenarios, and educate their constituency (Arnold, 2000). Historically, decision makers have indicated that inaccessibility of required geographic data and difficulties in synthesizing various recommendations are primary obstacles to spatial problem solving (Ascough et al., 2002). Indeed studies have shown that the ability to produce meaningful solutions can be improved if these obstacles are lessened or removed through an integrated systems approach, such as a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS). As Ascough et al. (2002) have observed, a SDSS makes a positive contribution to decision-makers’ task if it enables them to reach: (i) a more accurate solution, (ii) a faster solution to a given problem, or (iii) both of these.