Integrated Solution for Water Resources Information Management: A Case study of Athi River Catchment

The management of water resource has presented a major challenge to the various organizations mandated to manage this valuable resource. This has been due to the high rates of population growth and urbanization which has led to an increased demand for water for various uses which in turn puts a lot of stress on existing water sources. The main challenges include lack of well-defined processes of information flow from collection, storage and dissemination. We also have different storage formats hindering proper information sharing resulting to duplication. At present water resources information in Athi River Catchment is sent by use of emails and compact discs (cds) ones its collected. It is then added into existing databases at the regional or headquarters offices. The main goal of the study was to come up with an integrated web-based system for water resources information management. This will provide a proper water information collection, storage and dissemination platform. The integrated system is composed of a spatial enabled and a centralized database to store data, a web based mapping component that provides tools for data updating and visualization and a website that hosts the mapping component and also provides additional information related to water resources use. Open Source and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technologies were used to create the system. The system contained information on surface water, ground water, water quality, water pollution and water shed protection. The system offered a solution to management of water resources information, by providing one shared integrated system hence reducing duplication and lowering maintenance cost. The system also offers a streamlined flow of information to all WRMA (Water resources management authority) offices which is mandated to manage Athi River Catchment hence ensuring there is well structured process of collecting, storing and disseminating of information. Adoption of the system will ensures we leverage advancement in GIS technology in management of our various resources.