Decision Support Systems for implementing the European Water Framework Directive: The MULINO approach

Abstract

The EU Water Framework Directive, WFD (Dir. 2000/60/EC) introduces an innovative, integrated and holistic approach to the protection and management of water resources. New methodologies and tools are required to support implementation of the new policy. To fulfil these requirements, tools such as Decision Support Systems (DSSs) that integrate environmental, social and economic concerns and that facilitate the involvement of interested parties in the formulation of strategies may be useful. The MULINO project has developed a methodology and a DSS tool to tackle such problems. Focus is on connecting environmental tools and decision support methods by combining the DPSIR (Driving force, Pressure, State, Impact and Response) approach with multi-criteria analysis methods in a Decision Support System called mDSS. The proposed approach can be applied in decision processes in which a group of people (i.e. decision makers and stakeholders), share a common conceptual framework and procedure, to structure the problem, discuss the decision and communicate the proposed solution. In this paper, the MULINO approach is presented, focusing on its potential for the current implementation process of the WFD, according to the recently released guidance documents and the experience gained in several case studies carried out during the research project. The evaluation of the potential of the tool for applications in real-world management problems is carried out by taking into account the feedback from project partners and from end users, within and outside the research consortium.

Introduction

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) requires planning and management activities to consider a broad set of sectors such as environment, energy, industry, agriculture, and tourism. IWRM is thus characterized by a high level of complexity, because it requires the involvement of numerous decision makers operating at different levels and a large number of stakeholders with conflicting preferences and different value judgments (Lahdelma et al., 2000).

Adequate methodologies and tools are therefore needed, in order to support IWRM, with a leading role to be played by science and research as a support to policy development and implementation (ICSU, 2002). Many of the very different answers provided by research in support of IWRM can be categorised within the broadest concept of Decision Support Systems (DSSs).

The concept of DSS emerged in the 1970s, as a family of computer systems in the field of decision theory (e.g. Gorry and Scott Morton, 1971), showing great potential in the field of environmental management in dealing with semi-structured, unstructured, or even thorny or wicked problems (Beynon et al., 2002, Courtney, 2001). In the last decades, numerous DSSs have been developed for water resource management, in which increasingly sophisticated computerised systems integrate watershed processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales, simulation models, and decision-making approaches. These tools have been developed for a variety of purposes, such as prevention of water shortages (drought), surpluses (floods), and water impairment (pollution). Examples are Waterware (Fedra, 1994, Jamieson and Fedra, 1996a, Jamieson and Fedra, 1996b), Aquatool (Andreu et al., 1996), Nelup (Dunn et al., 1996), Floodss (Catelli et al., 1998), Dssipm (da Silva et al., 2001).

Unfortunately, despite the many DSSs developed in the field of environmental management, the risk of Decision Support Systems failing to meet the challenge of real-world problems is reported to be high and even the criteria for judging whether a DSS has been successful or not are often a matter of discussion (e.g. Newman et al., 1999, Zapatero, 1996). There is therefore a widely-recognised need to develop new decision support tools in this field, with greater attention to the needs of potential users and to the identification of the concrete application contexts.

In the European Union the most important reference for identifying application contexts is the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EC, 2000) and thus potential users should be identified in the water resources management authorities involved in the challenge of meeting the Directive's obligations and implementation requirements. The WFD is generally considered one of the most important pieces of legislation issued at the European level in the last decade (Letcher and Giupponi, 2005), for its ambitious aim of establishing “a framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwaters” (art.1) for all Member States. The implementation of the Directive should enable the EU to achieve a “good status” of surface and ground waters, through a common implementation process expected to last for 15 years. The approach adopted considers water bodies as components of ecosystems to be managed at the level of “River Basin Districts” (RBDs), which should be identified and which will thus become the competent authorities for the WFD implementation at the local scale.

After the adoption of the WFD, many initiatives have been proposed to support its implementation. This paper presents a recent experience in the development and application of a DSS tool called MULINO-DSS, or simply mDSS (see Giupponi et al., 2004b, Mysiak et al., 2004, for details on the DSS design), developed within the MULINO project (MULti-sectoral, INtegrated and Operational Decision Support System for sustainable use of water resources at catchment scale) and funded within the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Union,¹ as one of the many research initiatives launched in support of the WFD implementation process.

The main objective of this paper is to present the MULINO approach and DSS tool, and discuss the final results of the project, in particular those related to the applications of mDSS in collaboration with European water administrations. The aim is to derive useful lessons which may contribute to the further development of both mDSS and of future DSS tools in the field of water management, and facilitate wider adoption by the potential end users.

After a brief introduction of the approach adopted to cope with the policy background which originated the research project (Section 2), the mDSS potential for the WFD implementation is assessed by referring to the relevant, recently released, European guidance documents (Section 3). An evaluation of the mDSS software in view of operational applications in the real world is then presented and discussed in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, with concluding remarks and proposed elements for further research and DSS developments.