GIS-based Water Quality Management System of Coastal Area

Abstract

There has been growing demands to manage water pollution of west coastal region in S.Korea due to the large scale of urbanization along the coastal zone. For more effective water quality management, GIS based integrated water quality management system has been developed. The integrated system implies to integrate the analysis of the phenomena of coastal zone as the inflow of water pollutants as inlands changes. The integrated system includes pollutant database, water quality models for inland area and offshore areas, and GUI. Once the initial pollutants were estimated, discharging pollutants were calculated and the concentration rate was estimated using a model for the stream flow inland. Based on the concentration rates of the pollutants from inland areas, the offshore water quality model was run to see the fluctuation of water pollution in the coastal zone. The coastal zone was divided into finite number of cells and modeling was made for individual cells using coastal water quality forecasting model. Numerous scenarios were adopted to see the changes of water pollutant as conditions changed. The integrated system developed from this study can demonstrate its dedication for better management of water pollution thereby lead to BMP(Best Management Practice) for the coastal zone.