A Web-based Open-source Geoinformation Tool for Regional Water Resources Assessment

To reduce the impact of droughts and increase the resilience of regional water systems, various competing demands, such as hydropower, supply, irrigation and river ecosystems, need to be reconciled. In this perspective, for a sustainable and efficient management of the water resources, planners and practitioners would benefit from using the most recent data and easily accessible analysis tools, that can make hydrological model applications easier to apply. In this paper, a web-based open-source geoinformation tool for estimating Flow Duration Curves (FDCs) in ungauged basins is presented. The FDC estimation derives from a regional statistical model, that relates basin topographic parameters, climatic characteristic and other environmental factors to FDC features via multivariate regression. The software tool has the primary function of simplifying the GIS-intensive application of the multivariate methodology, allowing computation of the necessary basin features through web services. These are developed in compliance with the OGC specifications for geospatial Web Processing Service (WPS), while scripting and model implementation are developed server-side, which ensures the user access to always updated data, and to procedures free from software client compatibility issues. An operational application is available for the North-Western Italy.