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ABSTRACT
The purpose of the project “Development of GIS of water quality management in the Dnipro Basin on the territory of the Republic of Belarus” was to create a software tool for prompt and comprehensive assessment of the quality of surface water in the Dnipro River and its tributaries. The overall goal of the project was to create an environmental database of the state of surface water in the Dnipro Basin on the Belarusian territory based on geo-informational technologies.
This is a final report on the development of a geo-informational system of water quality management in the Dnipro Basin on the Belarusian territory. This project became possible due to the financial support and the overall guidance of the Intentional Development Research Center (IDRC, Canada). The project was implemented with the support of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus. The project succeeded owning to the assistance of the UNDP-GEF Dnipro Basin Environment Programme, UN representative office in Belarus and Center for the preparation and implementation of international projects “EcologyInvest”.
Specialists in informational technologies, water quality assessment, hydrology and water management from various research institutions of the Republic of Belarus took part in this project. The software was basically developed by the specialists of the Central Research Institute for Integrated Water Use (CRIIWU) at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus on the basis of the licensed software and equipment acquired as a part of this project. The acquired software includes the following programs: the ESRI ArcView 3.3 and the SKE Dynamic Atlas. In addition to the CRIIWU employees, specialists of the Hydrometeorological department of the Belarusian Environmental Ministry, company Belgorhimprom, and Land Management Surveying and Cartography Committee took part in the implementation of this project. The project was implemented under the general guidance of the head of the CRIIWU laboratory of water monitoring and water cadastre A.P. Stankevich. Researches of the CRIIWU laboratory of water monitoring and water cadastre V.N.Korneev, A.P.Dalimaev, A.V. Pakhomov, P.Yu.Afanasiev, S.G.Kozhemiakin, and researchers of other institutions took part in the project. The head of the CRIIWU laboratory of water protection technologies and hydro-ecological feasibility studies A.A.Fediaev acted as a research supervisor of the project. Russian and Ukrainian specialists were involved in the project to ensure integrity of the structure of environmental databases of the Dnipro Basin of the three riparian states and integrity of the formats of initial information as well as to develop specific software modules.
The complete version of GIS of surface water quality management in the Dnipro Basin on the Belarusian territory (WatGIS) was presented at a workshop in Pinsk (Belarus) on 3-4 October 2002. The workshop was attended by the representative of oblast committees for natural resources and environmental protection (Homel, Brest) and the Ministry of Natural Resources And Environmental Protection of Belarus, who were the target users of WatGIS. The software was improved to consider the comments and propositions of its potential users. Information of the state water cadastre obtained from the monitoring stations of the Environmental Ministry located at the points of waste water discharge was added to the database; tests were run to assess the accuracy of its various attributes (water pollution indices, average annual indices, etc.). WatGIS was installed at the Minsk city committee for natural resources and environmental protection, oblast committees for natural resources and environmental protection (Minsk, Vitebsk, Mohilev, Brest, Homel oblasts) and at the analytical and monitoring department of the Environmental Ministry that are the major agents of water quality management in the Dnipro Basin. The appropriate hardware was procured as a part of this project and delivered to the end-users to run WatGIS.
