Distribution of water in time and space is uneven and hence the judicious utilization and management of water resource is of utmost importance. The web based GIS Informationsystems has emerged as an advanced tool with an advantage of accessing spatial/non spatial information for decision making, effective planning and management of water resources. It also creates a unique facility for sharing spatial information among a virtually unlimited number of users.

In this regard, CGWB has developed a “Web enabled Ground Water Information System(WEG WIS)” for the users of water sector, which provides a complete solution to the decision makers for formulating, monitoring macro/micro level schemes etc. The WEWIS comprises the spatial database infrastructure connected through Internet/Intranet. The system has been developed to provide a unified internet based access to water related information (spatial/non spatial) for policy planning and management.

Creation of Spatial Data Infrastructure by CGWB

A need was felt to create spatial and non spatial datasets related to hydrology and their linking with various socio economic data for planning and management of water resources projects in a holistic manner. Under the World Bank aided Hydrology Project an initiative was made by CGWB to create spatial data base in respect of various themes related to ground water for the entire country utilizing source map on 1: 250,000 scale. As envisaged, thesedatasets are also to be integrated with the Dedicated Software developed for ground water data processing centers.

In this regard, CGWB has acquired digital topo map of nearly 348 degree sheets covering entire country on 1:250,000 scale from Survey of India (SOI). As per the agreement, the data provided by SOI has single user license and is non-transferable. As the spatial data in respect of layers such as Landuse, Geomorphology, Soils, Geology, Geological structures etc. is not available in digital form with the concerned agencies, the paper maps in respectof these layers have been acquired from different departments preferably on 1:250,000 scales and has been digitizes through National Informatics Centre, New Delhi.

Development of the Web Enabled Grounder Water Information System

The WEG WIS is an WEB GIS service which provides a functional internet based platform for accessing water related maps and data for decision making and planning. The information available would be disseminated as per the map restriction policy of the Government.

WEG WIS have been integrated with the thematic data, the dynamic data such as water level/water quality, other ground water related information and socio-economic databases. The information available on different scales i.e. 1:1 million, 1:500,000 and 1:250,000 has been be seamlessly integrated and would be visible based on the user selectable zoomLevel.

The CGWB application will be a client-server based web GI S application. The users will access the CGWB application through Internet browsers. The application will interact with the spatial database and retrieve the information from the database through GIS based services.

The GI S functionalities in this application is designed to cater to multiple categories of CGWB users – simultaneously – on internet browser along with functionalities of map navigation/exploration, selection of features, spatial queries, query builder, contain query, various map browsing tools, thematic mapping, district and watershed wise masking,report generation, printing and email, graph and chart generation, metadata explorer, GE MS data Integration and some pre-defined queries.

Various users spread across the Internet and intranet will access the CGWB application running on the web server, using a web browser for performing various tasks such as map browsing, making queries, analysis etc. The CGWB application will have a common interface for all authenticated users with specific access to certain functionalities.

This CGWB application will advantageous over the existing system in the following ways:

• User has been given choice to navigate Administrative Boundary or Hydrological Unit.After navigating to District level or Watershed level, user can select the layers to performattribute based thematic map rendering and by clicking on the area of interest on the map, user will get the desired information.

• User can ‘Print’ the map displayed in the map viewer along with layer legend list. User canSave the map and send it as an attachment through mail.

• With the help of Query Builder, user can select map features by performing query. Thisfunctionality will provide user friendly interface to write/select query. Based on the query, map area will be selected and an attribute table will be shown.

• With the help of GE MS Integration Module, user can see the wells having water level or water quality or rainfall information for a specified area and date. User can see the attributeinformation of the wells and can generate graphs and charts for the selected time series.

• With the help of Predefined Query module, user can execute certain predefined queries tomake analysis, selection on map and generate results on the basis of queries executed.

(courtesy PIB)
[The author is Assistant Director (M & C), PIB, New Delhi.].