User-centered approach to developing decision support systems for estimating pumping and augmentation needs in Colorado's South Platte Basin, A

Presented during the USCID water management conference held on October 13-16, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The theme of the conference was "Water rights and related water supply issues."Throughout the United States, new models for computing augmentation requirements are being developed and applied. For the past eight years, I, along with my research team, the Integrated Decision Support Group (IDS), have had the opportunity to study the data and modeling needs of water users in the Lower South Platte River region in Colorado. With the active participation of the water users, IDS has prioritized the needs and then collected or generated the data and modeling tools necessary to meet these needs. This approach to Decision Support System (DSS) development is based on the premise that the user has a good understanding of what their current and future needs are, and with this in mind, we have developed an interactive and dynamic development process in which the users play an integral part. I refer to this approach as a "user-centered approach". With this approach, we have developed several data driven tools that are widely used in the South Platte Basin and other parts of Colorado. These tools are collectively called the "South Platte Mapping and Analysis Program" (SPMAP) (www.ids.colostate.edu/projects/splatte). The project has been funded by water users, the Colorado Water Resources Research Institute, Colorado Cooperative Extension, Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station, the Division 1 Office of the Colorado State Engineer, and the United States Bureau of Reclamation.Proceedings sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Central Utah Project Completion Act Office and the U.S. Committee on Irrigation and Drainage