SPATIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE EGYPTIAN WATER SYSTEM FOR DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM MODELING

Transcription

1 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 1 SPATIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE EGYPTIAN WATER SYSTEM FOR DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM MODELING Fayek Farag 1, Ahmed El-Shafie 1, and Nahla Abu El-Fotouh 2 1 Researcher, Strategic Research Unit, National Water Research Center, Egypt fayekfarag@yahoo.com 2 Head, Strategic Research Unit, National Water Research Center, Egypt ABSTRACT Water is a vital resource for human survival and economic development; as populations and economies grow; water demands increase while the availability of the resources remains constant. At present, the dominant approach for water policymakers in Egypt is to have a water resources/uses plan that overcomes the inconsistencies among different water sectors under the existing water budget. In this context, efforts are already directed toward supporting water resources planning, policymaking and management through development of a model that considers several issues associated with the core problem of developing multiple sources and managing multiple uses of water. However, an evaluation of such water scenario is highly needed to examine its performance and impacts overtime for water use patterns. Therefore, it is essential to utilize a suitable technique that is flexible enough to be tailored to mimic the existing water system in Egypt and evaluate its efficiency under specific scenario. To help address such questions and problems, a Decision Support System (DSS) was conceived. A decision support system (DSS) is a systematic method of leading decision-makers through the task of considering all objectives and then evaluating options to identify a solution that best solves an explicit problem while satisfying as many objectives as possible. A DSS consists of mathematical models, data, and interfaces that connect decision-makers directly to the models. On the other hand, water resources plan is the integrating concept for a number of water sectors such as hydropower, water supply and sanitation, irrigation and drainage, and environment. Therefore, there is a need to perform these linkages and influences through spatial representation in order to have a successful evaluation. At a practical level, the existing water system should be discretized into coherent and self-consistent blocks namely, Spatial Units (SU), of land possessing in terms of water supply/demand patterns. Fortunately, the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment abstracts the different layers, providing transparent interactive facilities to the analysis of feature sets provided by different layers. The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the merits of GIS tools as key methodologies, processes, and actions for developing SU for the Egyptian water system as the basic calculation unit for DSS modeling algorithm. Furthermore,

2 2 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt comprehensive analysis of the multiple sources and uses of water layers (irrigation and drainage networks, crop pattern, municipal and industrial) is performed utilizing GIS to be associated within each SU. The developed approach utilizing GIS was able to achieve an excellent level of accuracy for providing spatial representation of Egyptian water system. Keywords: Geographic Information System (GIS); Decision Support System (DSS); Water Resources Planning, and Egyptian Water System. 1. INTRODUCTION Conserving water by efficient use is economically and environmentally sound. However, accessibility to it with demands of an ever-increasing economic investment requires a more complex technical-scientific knowledge at a moment in which availability is reaching its limits. That's where water resources management and new technologies play a significant role, especially when there are signs of water scarcity and there is increasing competition over limited water supplies. In such conditions, access to information which aids in the solution of such complex problems, becomes almost fundamental. However, the complexity in the interaction of the variety of components of water-related systems makes it difficult to find simple response to most of its problems. In order to solve them, multi-disciplinary cooperation among professionals is required. Information systems are the only options that enable a quick and easy way to recent findings in applied and basic research. Although the principles for production and use of information are the same for all fields of knowledge, water resources require systems which define information needs, as well as techniques for storage and retrieval: Nour El-Din M., (1996). Water resources development in Egypt has been under careful study for many years and a considerable amount of data is available, including several sophisticated and powerful analytical tools. Nevertheless, the knowledge and the technical background still seem inadequate to incorporate the demand of sustainable development. Egypt faces a combination of challenges in the irrigation/drainage sector rarely found elsewhere. It relies almost entirely on irrigation for its agricultural production while its water resources consist largely of a single international river, the Nile River. Most of its limited arable land lies in the Nile Delta where a flat topography, coupled with several high and saline water tables, creates the need for a well-planned drainage system. The drained water has to be pumped into the Mediterranean though a drainage system separate from the source canals although part of the drainage water is now being reused for irrigation too. Furthermore, the shortage of arable land in Egypt's Nile Valley has prompted the development of the upland desert fringes for agricultural production: Strategic Research Unit, NWRC, DSS final report, Phase I, (2003). The dominant approach for water resources planning in Egypt is to develop local resources (groundwater, re-use of drainage and domestic waste-waters, sea-water desalination, flash floods and rain harvesting) and to improve the efficiency of their

3 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 3 use. In recent years, the emphasis has begun to change from that of simply ensuring water availability to one of improving quality of life and long-term sustainability. During many years planning processes, the review or assessment is directed primarily at the technical or economic suitability of the proposed action. Less attention has been given to cross cutting relationships, which could aid in discerning the longer-term consequences of an action. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate the merits of the GIS tools as key methodologies, processes, and actions in order to perform spatial representation (Spatial Units (SU)) for the Egyptian water system as the basic calculation unit for DSS modeling algorithm. The study will focus on how the GIS layers for the irrigation directorate and districts were developed and overlaid with the drainage catchments to finally obtain the Spatial Units. 2. EGYPT S WATER SYSTEM The River Nile is the main source of water for Egypt; with an annual allocated flow of 55.5 km 3 /yr. Internal surface water resources are estimated at 0.5 km 3 /yr. This brings the total actual surface water resources to 56 km 3 /year. The Nubian Sandstone aquifer located under the Western Desert is considered an important groundwater source. The volume of groundwater is estimated at 1 km3/yr. Internal renewable groundwater resources are estimated at 1.3 km3/yr, bringing the total renewable groundwater resources to 2.3 km 3 /yr. The main source of internal recharge is percolation from irrigation water in the Valley and the Delta: UN CCA, (2001). The irrigation system in the Nile Valley and Delta is a combined gravity and water lifting system. Downstream of the High Aswan Dam, there are seven barrages to facilitate abstraction. The main canal system first level comprises 34, 149 km of canals and takes its water from head regulators, located upstream of the Nile barrages. Water is distributed along branches second level where the flow is continuous. At the third level, distributaries receive water according to a rotation schedule. Water is pumped from the distributaries to irrigate fields: MOWRI, (2002a). The irrigation system in Egypt is intentionally discretized into 196 irrigation units namely, Irrigation Districts (ID) to calculate/distribute the water need based on the water demand at this level. An extensive national drainage program has been carried out over the last four decades to control water-logging and salinity. The drainage system consists of open drains (around 19, 468 km), sub-surface drains and pumping stations. In 2003, slightly over 3 million ha of the total irrigated area were drained, of which about 2.2 million ha with sub-surface drainage. The sub-surface drained area represents more than 65 percent of the total cultivated area. There are 99 pump stations devoted to the pumping of drainage effluent. The power-drained area was estimated at about 1.65 million ha in Drainage water from agricultural areas on both sides of the Nile Valley is returned to the River Nile or main irrigation canals in Upper Egypt and in the southern Delta. Drainage water in the Delta is either pumped back into irrigation canals for

4 4 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt reuse or pumped into the northern lakes or the Mediterranean Sea. The drainage systems in the Delta region is geographically split into 83 drainage catchments utilizing a model namely, Simulation of Water management in the Arab Republic of Egypt (SIWARE). Basically, the splitting criterion was based on the area served for each drainage pump stations in an individual fashion. Integrating all these elements into an assessment requires sophisticated decision support tools to be designed for use by planners and decision makers. Moreover, there is a need for tools that can model the hydrologic patterns that reproduce the behaviours of the Nile River and irrigation systems, into a complete information platform, capable of forecasting different scenarios and keeping track of many hydrological parameters, like water consumption, pollution, salinity and others. To help address such questions and problems, a Decision Support System (DSS) was conceived through an ongoing Egyptian Italian project entitled "Decision Support System for Water Resources Planning Based on Environmental Studies". 3. THE DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM MODEL A Decision Support System (DSS) is a computational system designed to support decision-making by anticipating the combined resultant effects of one or multiple actions. In other words, the DSS is an interactive computer-based system or subsystem intended to help decision makers use communications technologies, data, documents, knowledge and/or models to identify and solve problems, complete decision process tasks, and make decisions. The main purposes of creating the DSS is to propose a methodology for integrating environmental and socio-economic aspects in water resources planning exercises, and develop a computer-based tool that multiplies the decision makers capacity of analysis and evaluation, thus simulating a wider and more integrated perspective in the planning process, also fostering dialogue among various actors. The implementation of such DSS tools implies the integration of different components and technologies: (Walsh, 1993; Nachtnebel, 1994) such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), computation representations of reality, as well as mathematical models. Therefore, there is a need to perform these linkages and influences through spatial representation in order to have a successful evaluation. At a practical level, the existing water system should be discretized into coherent and self-consistent blocks namely, Spatial Unit (SU), of land possessing in terms of water supply/demand patterns. The spatial units can be considered as the maximum area irrigated by a single source, capable of containing at least one response unit. A spatial unit can also be an aggregation of response units. At the highest generalization, it can contain all the area available (like a total country). It can contain different types of response units at the same time. At a practical level, the spatial units can unify all area irrigated into one single inlet and one outlet. This representation will provide the network with the

5 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 5 facility needed to create a computational model. Figure (1) shows the concept of the spatial unit. The Response Unit (RU) is the location where all kind of disturbances is introduced in the system. Those disturbances, categorized differently depending on the kind of response units they affect, are converted into hydrology parameters to reflect a change in the behavior of the nodes. Those changes will affect all nodes downstream in the network. A RU may grow as much as the spatial unit it belongs to. Practically, it will depend on the cultivated area according to the irrigation boundaries, limited most of the time by the drains that separate the areas fed by different sources. In this study, the RU could be agricultural practices, domestics and/or industrial RU: (IT Synergy S.A ) Figure 1. The Concept of the Spatial Unit In order to develop such DSS model, there is a need to discretize the Egyptian Water System Map (EWSM) into coherent and self-consistent Geo-boundaries (SU) in order to be able to cope with the water system mathematically via a DSS model. In this context, two conditions should be fulfilled while performing SUs; these are physical and modeling conditions. From physical perspectives, these SUs should represent the reality of Egypt s water system. Furthermore, from modeling perspectives, each Geoboundary should be a closed calculation unit that is connected to the whole system via single input node (water inflow to the SUs) and single output node (water outflow from the SUs). 4. METHODOLOGY In light of the Egypt s water system design and the physical and modeling limitations for performing the geo-boundary of the SU, it was decided to utilize irrigation district

6 6 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt and drainage catchments (discussed in section 2) as the basic layers to perform the geo-boundary of the SU. For visual reasoning, an irrigation directorate namely, Sharqia Directorate is selected to introduce the methodology for developing the SU. Then, the same methodology has been applied for the whole Delta region. 4.1 Pre-processing of existing information Basically, the methodology will focus on developing the GIS layers for the irrigation directorate, districts, and drainage catchments. The methodology adapted within this paper includes three processes: Scanning, Rectification, and Digitizing. It is important to be mentioned here that these processes were tailored because the sources for digital representation of the irrigation directorate, irrigation districts and drainage catchments layers did not exist. 4.2 The Scanning Process The hardcopy maps for the Delta, and the Valley (Middle and Upper Egypt) were obtained from the Irrigation Department, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, with scale 1: 100,000 that include the irrigation directorates as well as the irrigation districts. The Scanning process was carried out using "ColorTrac Smart LF 4080 Scanner" with high resolution. Figure (2) shows the scanning process using only one example from "Sharkyia Governorate", however, the same process has been truly applied for the whole Delta and the Nile Valley. Scanning Scanning was done for all Irrigation directorates: (13 for Delta and 9 for Middle Upper Egypt) Example: Sharkyia Irrigation Direct Figure 2. The scanning process for the Irrigation Directorate and Districts of "Sharkyia Governorate"

7 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 7 The Scanning process was not only limited to the spatial scanning but also included the scanning and identification of the monitoring stations. Figure (3) shows the scanning of the locations of the monitoring stations. Until this stage, the hard copy maps of the Delta and the Nile valley, including the irrigation directorate, irrigation districts, as well as the monitoring station, were successfully scanned. However, all these digital layers don't have any coordinates system. Here comes the "Rectification" process, which is basically the process of assigning coordinates to whatever scanned. 4.3 The Rectification (Geo-Referencing) Process Ground Control Points (GCPs) were collected from the scanned maps and the corresponding points were collected from the vector layers obtained from the Egyptian Surveying Authority (ESA) maps with scale 1:50,000 using ARCVIEW 3.2a GIS software (ESRI, 2000). Identifying the GCP points in the ESA maps that match those points collected from the scanned maps were somewhat difficult due to the changes in the shape of the canals and the drains. Therefore the "Query Tools" were used to inquire from the database to find the names of the canals and the drains. The coordinates of the collected points were recorded from the ESA Digital Maps. Then, those coordinates were used in the Geo-referencing process using ArcGIS software (ESRI, 2004). Figure 3. Scanning the locations of the monitoring stations. Using the collected GCP points and the "Rectification" tools within the georeferencing menu in the ArcGIS software, the scanned maps were finally warped to the vector layers of the ESA maps. The maps were georeferenced to Transverse Mercator, Helmert Spheroid, and the Old Egyptian Datum Figure (4) shows the outputrectified map of Sharkyia Directorate.

8 8 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt Figure 4. The output rectified map of Sharkyia Directorate. When the GIS layers developed by the ESA overlay on top of the output rectified map as shown in Figure (5), it is important to stress here that there are certain little shifts in some locations in the canals and the drains. This is basically due to the differences in the shape of the features in the ESA maps and the Irrigation Department Maps. The ESA maps were produced from aerial photos captured in 1990, while the Irrigation Department maps were produced in 1934 using the regular surveying process. However, the ESA maps were used as Base Maps while the output rectified scanned maps were just used as a leader to digitize the boundaries of the irrigation directorates and districts. Figure 5. The canals and drains GIS layers overlay on the output rectified scanned map of Sharkyia Directorate

9 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt The Digitizing Process The last step for the development of the GIS layers of the irrigation directorates and the irrigation districts was the digitizing process. A new Polygon theme for each irrigation directorate was created using "View New Theme - Polygon" tools within ARCVIEW GIS software. The ESA maps were used as Base Maps while the output rectified scanned maps were used as a leader to digitize the boundaries of the irrigation directorates and districts. Figure (6) shows the digitizing process where the ESA GIS layers' features were followed in the digitizing process. Figure 6. The digitizing process for the irrigation districts of "Sharkyia" directorate Generally, the boundaries of each irrigation directorate are two main drains; however, the boundaries of each irrigation district could be canals or drains. The names of the irrigation districts within each directorate were entered to the Attribute Table. Once the boundaries of each irrigation district are defined, it is easy to define the canals and drains within each district. Figure (7) shows the digitized boundaries for the irrigation districts for "Sharkyia" directorate. Figure (8) shows the canals and drains within each irrigation district. Same process has been truly applied for the whole Delta and the Nile Valley. The output GIS layer for all irrigation directorates and districts that cover the entire Delta and the Valley are shown in the Results and Discussion section.

10 10 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt Sharkyia Irrigation Directorate Irrigation Districts Figure 7. The digitized boundaries for the irrigation districts Figure 8. The canals and drains within each irrigation district 5. PERFORMING GEO-BOUNDARY OF THE SPATIAL UNIT To attain the criteria of each spatial unit concerning the irrigation and drainage (or input and output), the Geo-Processing, Overlay operations within ArcGIS software (ESRI, 2004) were used. The Overlay operations include Merge, Clip, Intersect, and Union processes. The Intersect process is used when it is required to integrate two spatial data sets while preserving only those features falling within the spatial extent common to both themes. The Intersect process computes the geometric intersection of the two themes. The input theme can be a line or polygon theme. The overlay theme must be a polygon

11 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 11 theme. The overlay theme s features will split the input theme. Any features in the input theme that are not overlaid by features in the overlay theme will not be added to the new theme. The output shapefile s features will be of the same type as the input theme features. When intersecting features of the input theme with the polygons of the overlay theme, the attribute tables are also updated. The attribute table for the output shapefile includes the attributes from the input and overlay theme. Intersecting the irrigation districts layer with the drainage catchments layer produced the spatial units layer. The following figures show the detailed methodology adapted for creation of the spatial units' GIS layer and it focuses on only one example from "Sharkyia Governorate", however, the same process has been truly applied for the whole Delta and the Nile Valley. The first step included overlaying the drains layer on top of the irrigation districts layer to produce the drainage catchments' layer as shown in Figure (9). Legend sharkyia_irrigation_district <all other values> DISTRICT_N Abu Kebeer I.D. Awlad Sakr I.D. Awlad Sakr I.D. East Faqous I.D. El-Hesenyia I.D. Hehyia I.D. Ibrahimyia I.D. Kafr Sakr I.D. Menya El-Kamh I.D. West Faqous I.D. Kafr Sakr I.D. West Faqous I.D. El-Hesenyia I.D. Zagazig I.D. Abu Kebeer I.D. East Faqous I.D. Zagazig I.D. Menya El-Kamh I.D. Ibrahimyia I.D. / Hehyia I.D Kilometers / Kilometers Figure 9. Overlaying the Drains on the Irrigation Districts to produce the Drainage Catchments The drainage catchments layer was then overlaid by the irrigation districts layer using the intersection process to produce the spatial units layer. Figure (10) shows the intersection process. Each spatial unit was given a name and a number according to the region it is located in, for example, the spatial units located in East Delta region was given a name "ED#", the "#" is indicated the spatial unit number. Once the spatial units layer was produced, the input and the output nodes layers were created using the "overlay intersect" process of the spatial units layer with the canals and drains layers respectively. The produced GIS layers of the inputs and the outputs nodes are shown in the Results and Discussion section.

12 12 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt Awlad Sakr I.D. El-Hesenyia I.D. + Ibrahimyia I.D. Kafr Sakr I.D. West Faqous I.D. Abu Kebeer I.D. East Faqous I.D. Hehyia I.D. Zagazig I.D. Menya El-Kamh I.D. ED39 ED38 ED30 ED34 ED31 ED22 ED23 ED25 ED15 ED24 ED09 ED10 ED14 ED11 ED16 / Kilometers Figure 10. The intersection process between the Irrigation Districts and the Drainage Catchments to produce the Spatial Units layer 6. RESULTS and DISCUSSION 6.1 The Irrigation Directorate and Districts The results have shown that the irrigation directorates and districts for the entire Delta

13 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt 13 and the Nile Valley were created using the tailored methodology. The total numbers of the produced irrigation directorates are (23) where (13) are located in Delta and (10) are located in the Middle Upper Egypt. The total numbers of the produced irrigation districts are (196) where (116) districts are located in Delta and (80) districts are located in the Middle Upper Egypt. Figure (11) shows the irrigation Directorate and Irrigation Districts for the Delta and the Valley. Figure 11. The irrigation Directorate and Irrigation Districts for the entire Delta and the Valley 6.2 Monitoring Stations Similarly, the monitoring stations layer was created as a point layer using the scanning, rectification and digitizing processes. The total number of the spatially

14 14 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt represented monitoring stations was 227 stations in Delta and Valley. The name of each canal that has a monitoring station was entered in the point attribute table of the layer. Figure (12) shows the locations of the monitoring stations. Figure 12. The locations of the monitoring stations 6.3 The Spatial Units The output of the "overlay intersection" process of the drainage catchments layer and the irrigation districts layer results in producing the spatial units layer which includes

15 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt Spatial Units for the entire Egyptian water system as the basic calculation units for the DSS modeling algorithm. In this way, the spatial units can be used to break the map of Egypt up into coherent and self-consistent blocks of land possessing some degree of homogeneity in terms of water consumption patterns such that mathematical algorithms may be selected to represent water demand patterns. Figure (13) shows the geo-boundary of the spatial units layer for the entire Delta including the name of each spatial unit consistent with the region that the spatial unit located in. Moreover, overlaying the "spatial units layer" with the "canals network layer" results in developing the "input nodes layer" for each single spatial unit as shown in Figure (14). In the same way, overlaying the "spatial units layer" with the drains network layer leads in producing the "outlet nodes" for each single spatial unit as shown in Figure (15). As a result, at a practical level the spatial units can unify all area irrigated into one single inlet and one outlet. This representation can provide the network with the facility needed to create a computational model. MD58 / WD44 MD57 MD62 ED63 MD53 MD54 MD52 MD60 MD59 MD55 WD27 MD39 MD61 MD50 ED52 WD19 MD51 MD41 MD43 MD48 WD30 MD45 WD51 WD53 MD42 MD44 WD50 MD46 MD47 MD49 MD38 ED49 WD18 MD40 MD34 ED50 ED51 WD17 MD31 WD76 WD55 WD52 WD64 WD54 MD27 MD29 MD32 MD36 WD16 ED45 WD66 MD35 ED43 ED47 ED48 ED61 WD29 MD30 MD33 ED62 WD74 ED44 ED46 WD56 WD15 WD14 WD13 MD37 ED42 WD65 MD28 WD75 WD12 MD25 ED36 ED40 MD22 ED39 ED54 WD10 ED37 WD62 MD24 ED35 WD58 WD63 WD45 WD67 MD56 MD26 MD21 ED38 ED59 WD60 WD61 WD28 WD23 MD23 ED27 WD24 ED28 WD22 WD08 WD68 ED29 ED60 WD25 WD57 WD07 WD06 ED34 MD15 MD17 ED30 WD79 WD47 WD48 MD20 ED20 ED33 WD78 WD49 WD70 ED21 ED31 WD73 MD16 MD19 WD72 WD69 WD05 ED19 ED32 WD80 WD03 MD18 ED23 WD81 ED22 WD26 WD77 ED25 WD43 WD21 WD20 WD46 ED18 ED57 ED58 WD37 MD11 WD42 WD36 MD12 ED15 ED24 WD01 WD02 ED26 WD71 MD14 WD35 MD13 ED13 WD31 ED14 ED16 ME07 WD41 ME11 ED55 ED56 ME09 MD08 MD10 WD34 WD33 MD09 ED09 ED17 ED11 ED08 MD07 ED10 MD05 ED12 MD03 MD06 ED53 WD32 ED06 ME13 ME14 MD04 ED05 ED07 ME16 ME12 ME10 ME14 ED04 ME15 ME17 ME09 MD02 MD01 ME40 ME18 ME19 ED03 ME21 WD38 ED02 ED Kilometers ME25 ME20 WD40 WD39 ME05 ME01 ME24 ME22 ME23 Figure 13. The geo-boundary of the spatial units' layer for the entire Delta

16 16 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt MD52 WD44 MD53 WD45 WD64 MD40 WD43 MD38 WD60WD63 WD42 WD62 WD46 WD31 WD59 WD61 WD33 MD27 WD30 WD49 WD34 WD23 WD53 WD57 WD52 WD51 WD55 WD54 WD36 WD28 WD56 WD41 WD38 WD50 WD40 WD39 MD47 MD49 ED49 MD44 MD45 ED47ED48ED51 MD46 MD32 MD36 ED45ED50 MD31 ED44ED46 MD30 ED36ED43 MD29 ED40 ED42 MD35 MD33 MD37 ED41 MD28 MD34 ED35 MD24MD26 MD25 MD21 WD24 WD20 WD22 WD21 WD14 WD19 WD13 WD29 MD13 WD02 MD08 MD04 ED34 ED30 ED22 ED23 ED24 ED39 ED33 ED32 ED31 ED25 ED26 ED12 ED05 ED07ED06 ED04 MD01MD02 / ED38 ED13ED14ED11 ED17 ED15 ED16 ED09 ED10 MD05MD06 ED08 MD07 ED37 MD14 MD03 ED27 ED29ED28 ED21 MD23 WD15 WD16 WD12 WD27 WD17 MD16MD17 ED20 MD19 WD11MD15 WD18 WD10 ED19 WD05WD09 ED18 MD18 WD04 WD08 MD11 WD MD42 MD43 ED52 MD54 MD39MD41 ED01ED02 ED Kilometers Figure 14. The "Input Node" Layer for each single spatial unit MD53MD54 MD55 MD52 MD50 ED52 MD48 MD44MD45 MD34 MD47 MD43 WD45 MD41 MD49 MD42 MD39 MD46 WD44 MD38 MD31 MD40 WD43 ED50ED49 MD27MD29 WD63WD64 ED45 MD32 MD35 MD36MD37 ED51 WD61 MD33 WD62 MD30 ED43 WD47 ED44 WD46 WD30 MD23 WD32 MD28 ED47 WD31 ED40ED46 WD60 MD24 WD22 WD21 MD56 MD21 MD22 ED41 ED39 WD59 MD25 ED42 WD58 ED36 WD20 ED48 WD57 WD49 WD33 ED37 MD26 WD23 WD36 ED38 WD35 MD15 WD19 WD13 ED35 ED27 ED28 WD34 MD17 WD52WD53 ED20 MD19 WD51 WD10 ED29ED30 ED31 WD29 WD16 WD12 WD27 MD20 WD56 WD11 ED21 WD50 WD26 WD17 ED25 ED34ED32 ED33 ED23 MD18 ED19 WD41 WD37 WD54 WD04 MD16 WD18 WD06 ED15ED18 MD11 WD09 WD07 MD12 WD08 WD05 WD55 MD14 ED26 WD03 ED24 ED13 MD13 WD38 ED16 ED14 WD01WD02 MD08 MD10 ED17 MD09 MD07 ED09 WD40 WD39 ED08 MD06 ED07 MD03MD05 ED10ED06 ED12 ED11 ED05 MD04 ED04 MD51 MD01MD02 ED03 ED02 ED01 / Kilometers UE Figure 15. The "Outlet Node" Layer for each single spatial unit

17 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Integrating all elements of the Egyptian Water System for an assessment requires sophisticated decision support tools to be designed for use by planners and decision makers. Moreover, there is a need for tools that can model the hydrologic patterns that reproduce the behaviors of the Nile River and irrigation system, into a complete information platform, capable of forecasting different scenarios and keeping track of many hydrological parameters, like water consumption, pollution, salinity and others. To help address such questions and problems, a Decision Support System (DSS) was conceived through an ongoing Egyptian Italian project entitled "Decision Support System for Water Resources Planning Based on Environmental Studies". This paper demonstrated, in a detailed manner, the merits of using GIS tools as key methodologies, processes, and actions for developing the Spatial Units (SU) for the Egyptian water system as the basic calculation unit for a DSS modeling algorithm. The Egyptian water system is discretized into 280 coherent and self-consistent Geoboundaries Spatial Units (SU) in order to be able to cope with the water system mathematically via a DSS model. Using the GIS tool, twenty three irrigation directorates containing 196 Irrigation districts and 227 monitoring stations are spatially represented. A comprehensive analysis of the multiple sources and uses of water layers such as (irrigation and drainage networks, crop pattern, municipal and industrial) need to be performed utilizing GIS to be associated within each SU. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abu Zeid, K., "GIS Support to Decisions in Water Resources Management", Int. Conference on Land and Water Resources Management in the Mediterranean Region, Bari, Italy, (1993), Vol. 1, pp ESRI, "Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc", (2000), Redlands, CA, USA. IT Synergy S.A., "DSS for Water Resources Planning Based on Environmental Balance, Final Definition and Conceptualization of the Components in the Schematic Network", (2006), Smart Village, 6 October City, Egypt. Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, "Adopted Measures to Trace Major Challenges in the Egyptian Water Sector", (2002a). A report submitted to the Request of World Water Council for 3rd World Water Forum, Cairo, Egypt. Nachtnebel, H.P., "A Decision Support System for Interactive Groundwater Modeling and Management, Multicriteria Decision Analysis in Water Resources Management", International Hydrological Program (IHP), (1994), UNESCO, Paris. Nour El-Din M., "Management Information Systems in Water Resources", (1996), Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Egypt.

18 18 Twelfth International Water Technology Conference, IWTC Alexandria, Egypt Strategic Research Unit, NWRC, "DSS Final Report - Phase I", (2003), National Water Research Center, Qanatir, Qalubyia, Egypt. UNCCA, "United Nations' Common Country Assessment Egypt", (2001), Cairo, Egypt. Walsh, M. R., "Towards Spatial Decision Support Systems in Water Resources", (1993), J. of Water Resources Planning and Management, 119 (2), pp "Egypt's Nile Valley Basin Irrigation"