Selecting a GIS for a National Water Management Authority

Abstract

Owing to the complex, inter-disciplinary nature of geographical information systems (GIS), and to the wide variety of commercial GIS software available, considerable effort is needed to select software and hardware which most nearly matches an agency's requirements: current procedures for manipulating data must be evaluated in terms of equivalent or enhanced GIS methods; it must be determined which fundamental GIS concepts are necessary to support the level of user requirements; a suitable pilot study may need to be implemented; the size of the initial configuration, and its potential growth path, must be determined; and different groups within the agency must be satisfied with the choice: top management, technical personnel, and users. This paper discusses the selection of a GIS for a national water management authority, from a pilot study through the formulation of technical specifications and benchmarking, to the procedure for final evaluation.