WISDOM Information System Prototype for the Mekong Delta

ABSTRACT The WISDOM Project (Water Related Information System for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam, www.wisdom.caf.dlr.de) is a bilateral project between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. It is built up of two thematic domains, each containing several work packages. The scientific domain focuses on multidisciplinary issues of water management within the Mekong Delta such as research on aspects of water quantity and hydrologic modelling, water quality, land use change, vulnerability, climate change related topics, socio-economic variables, and knowledge management amongst others. About 60 scientists of nine Vietnamese and ten German Institutions as well 15 project funded PhD Students, as well as three associated PhD students are currently involved in the still ongoing project and contributed first valuable results. The second domain resolves the issue of knowledge and data dissemination by designing and implementing a borderless customized web based information System application. All results of the interdisciplinary project are provided to relevant stakeholders through this semantic web application, providing a user friendly graphical interface enabling the retrieval of customizable maps for decision support and monitoring tasks. Next to map data the system enables the retrieval of statistical data on geo chemistry, sociology, legal documents from the water sector, as well as literature and publications; all linked to the corresponding geo location within the Mekong Delta. The whole System is currently being customized to the special requirements of Vietnamese institutions aiming at the implementation of a sustainable water management. The WISDOM System - which is currently in prototypical stage and will be further developed over the next year - therefore provides a neutral platform for exchange and dissemination of water management relevant data and knowledge. All activities within the project have been accompanied by capacity building measures at water management relevant key organizations on several institutional levels