Web-based GIS for simulation, and visualisation: EPANET and data-rich shapefiles

Abstract The management of water resources often involves with spatially and temporally varied information collected from various providers with different data formats. Although certain software or applications such as QGIS[1] and EPANET[2] have been developed to support the analyses and decision making, these solutions do have some critical weaknesses: 1) it can take users considerable time to become proficient in using a given application, 2) applications generally assume a level of domain-specific knowledge, 3) applications may require customisation through plug-ins to provide suitable information and 4) applications are often tied to specific hardware / operating system configurations. To address these issues, the aqua3s and Fiware4Water research programmes were developed as ‘cloud first’ projects, using the cloud/web to deliver functionality. In this work, we developed approaches for integrating and visualising information to support water management, specifically developing a web-based EPANET simulation and visualisation for large water networks (c30,000 EPANET nodes and links), and a web-based visualisation of regional flood data shapefiles for Trieste and surrounding regions. In both cases, data was processed and balanced between client and server to minimise client loading and maximise responsiveness.