WSPC00780

• File Number: 8283.200
• Description: Colorado River Basin-Colorado River Computer Models-Colorado River Decision Support System-Ray
• State: CO
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 2/17/1994
• Title: PRYSH-Decision Support for Water Resources Management in the Colorado River Regions
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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1 Introduction

The US Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), once primarily a water project construction agency, is
now focused on the effective management of water resources to meet multiple objectives. These
management decisions tend to be complex, with sometimes uncertain consequences and with
significant long-lasting impacts. It is our premise that decision support systems (DSS) can aid
water resources engineers and managers in the analysis of these decisions.

BOR began a cooperative effort with the University of Colorado in 1987 to research and develop
such decision support tools. This effort established the Center for Advanced Decision Support
for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES), A key component of the effort was the
development of a water resources modeling framework that could be applied to any BOR
watershed. The resulting framework (River Simulation System or RSS) proved some critical
concepts but was not used to develop any operational models,

In 1992, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TV A) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRD
began a collaborative effort (the IN1EGRAL Project) to develop decision support tools for the
coordination and operation of multi-purpose reservoir and power systems. The primary contractor
for this project is CADSWES, Again, a key component of the project is the development of a
general-purpose water and power modeling framework (PRSYM), which is being based upon the
concepts proven by RSS, BOR's Upper and Lower Colorado Regions joined this effort in
January, 1994.

In this document, we present a brief technical background, followed by a discussion of our goals
and objectives, We then give an overview of the INTEGRAL Project and a discussion of the
major modeling component, PRSYM. We conclude with a discussion of our plans for the
maintenance and support of the software being developed and the major program milestones,

We invite comments by interested parties with regard to any part of this program description,
Comments may be provided to any technical steering team member (Figure 2), either verbally
or in writing.

2 Technical Background

Previous developments of DSS for water and environmental systems have concentrated primarily
on modeling (Fulp, et al, 1991, Reitsma and Sieh, 1992). Reitsma and Sieh make the argument
that a data-centered approach provides a much better foundation to support decision making
within an organization, The data-centered approach simply states that the data is the "center of
the DSS universe" -- all components (including models) "revolve" around the database.

The Upper and Lower Colorado Regions have adopted this approach to decision support (Ryan
and Sieh, 1993), Figure 1 shows the configuration that is currently being installed at each office.
Using existing relational database and wide-area-network technology, we are able to share data

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