A FOSS based Geoportal for supporting Integrated and sustainable water Management of Red-Thai Binh Rivers System in changing climate (IMRR project)

The Red-Thai Binh Rivers basin is the second largest of Viet Nam. Despite the construction of several large-scale reservoirs (Hoa Binh, Thac Ba, Tuyen Quang and Son La), lack of coordination and inefficient operation of the reservoirs have resulted in frequent water shortages causing loss of agricultural production, interruptions to navigation, increased pollution and environmental degradation. Conflicts among water uses in the basin, including hydropower production, flood control and water supply, and negative impacts on long-term sustainability (e.g. hydrological alteration, river aggradation and salt intrusion) are expected to increase under the combined pressure of increasing water and energy demand, and climate change. The IMRR project aims at developing and promoting strategies for the sustainable management of the Red-Thai Binh Rivers System in Vietnam through coordinated decision-making and negotiation, supported by modelling and optimization tools and through capacity building of local authorities in the water sector. In order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and environmental sustainability of water management in the Red-Thai Binh Rivers basin, in addition to the definition of advanced modelling and optimization tools, it is necessary to create a platform to support stakeholders dialogue, coordination and negotiations, as well as data collection, sharing and visualization. This ongoing research focuses on the creation of a web tool, GIS-based, leveraging on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that enables collection, sharing and visualization of IMMR project data at different aggregation levels; this includes visualization of the planning alternatives simulation and a GIS-based tool to receive notification from stakeholders/experts. The heterogeneous nature of these data requires the combination of different geospatial data services (Web Map Service WMS, Temporal Web Map Service WMS – T, Web Feature Service WFS, Web Feature Service transactional WFS - T, Sensor Observations Service SOS), servers (Geoserver, istSOS) and interface technologies (OpenLayers, Drupal) enabling interoperability of all complex resources data types. The webGIS allows to visualize, analyze and compare different planning alternatives for the management of the Red River water system in Vietnam, as a result of the Multi Criteria Decision Analysis methodology applied in the IMRR project. This research gives important insights on Spatial Data Infrastructures using FOSS, demonstrating that are a feasible and effective alternative to data and metadata collection, storage, sharing and visualization in complex water resources management contexts, using open international standards