Robust data analysis systems for urban watershed management decision support

Recent advances in water quality and quantity monitoring technologies provide cost effective means of collecting large amounts of information for complex water quality problems. Technological advances in water quality data analysis, however, have lagged, especially for converting raw data into information which can support decisions, and robust software for managing and analyzing the information available. As part of a Rouge River National Wet Weather demonstration grant, a suite of software called Watershed Analysis Tools for Reporting, Statistics, Hypothesis-testing and Display (WATRSHD) was designed, developed, and implemented. The WATRSHD data analysis system was based on prescribed analysis techniques. To ensure WATRSHD's suitability for large scale water quality management projects, it was developed and demonstrated using data collected by the Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project (a database containing over six million records of water quality and quantity information). Data analysis techniques, software applications developed, and case studies are presented in this chapter.