AWWA IMTECH51347

The Kentucky Water Resources Development Commission (WRDC) was created to develop a strategic plan for ensuring that every Kentucky household has access to potable water by the year 2020. Implicit in a project of such scope and complexity is the need to develop and maintain: extensive and detailed data and information; sophisticated tools for the identification, evaluation, analysis and comparison of factors vital to potable water demand and supply; and, methodologies for effectively communicating conclusions, plans and solutions. To support these requirements, the WRDC is applying geographic information system (GIS) technology. The GIS will support a wide range of applications involving the management, retrieval and analysis of land- and water-related data. It will serve as a tool for integrating many types of systems and data sets that contain spatial information and will provide WRDC with sophisticated analytical capabilities. Implementation of the WRDC's GIS requires widespread cooperation and support at the state, regional and local levels, committed management and a significant investment in technology. This paper discusses the comprehensive GIS planning effort undertaken by the WRDC in which functional requirements were identified, the system was designed for optimum productivity and an efficient implementation was planned. In addition, the paper summarizes the water resources planning and management issues that will be addressed by this ambitious GIS. Includes table, figures. See more