WaterWare On-line Manuals: Environmental screening

WaterWare
Reference & User Manual

WaterWare On-line Manuals

Release Level

6.2

Release Date

2010 05

Revision Level

1.0

Last modified on: Thursday, 20-May-10 18:42 CEST

EIA: environmental screening

The EIA tools supports a checklist-based screening level EIA for water resources development project; the checklists are based on the Guidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Environment Unit. The individual potential problems are evaluated with a backward chaining rule based expert system.

PLease note that the EIA system is an open "shell" that must be configured for any specific region, set of projects and problems, and regulatory guidelines for EIA. Dedicated editors are available to define new Project Tpes, Descriptors (the variables used in the expert system) and Rules to process the variable and derive the problem assessments.

The EIA tool works for individual PROJECTS or development plans.

Projects are of a given TYPE, which defines the applicable Checklist of potential problems. Checklists are project type specific.

Each Checklist consists of several Problems or potential problems, which are grouped into Problem Classes

The project assessment consists in compiling an assessment or classification of each of the possible problems in the checklist.

PROJECT TYPES supported are:

Project Type Short name
Multi Purpose Projects combining several of the types below, usually related to large dams and multi-purpose reservoirs multi-purpose
Dams and Reservoirs hydropower, where power generation dominates all the potential benefits and thus design considerations hydropower
Irrigation Projects, including both gravity fed and pumped schemes, surface water, groundwater, or mixed supply irrigation
Drainage and land reclamation drainage
Flood Protection flood_protection
Navigation Projects navigation
Fisheries and Aquaculture fisheries
Power Transmission Lines power_transmission

Editing PROJECT TYPES

The list of Project Types is open (data driven) and can be extended by the user in the EIA Problem Editor, accessible from the WaterWare application main menue.

All Checklists use a sequential structure of PROBLEM CLASSES or goups to organise the individual PROBLEMS in the checklists, reflecting the logic of a project implementation cycle:

Location selection for the project;
Planning and Design;
Construction phase including site preparation and possible resettlement;
Operation phase, normal operation and the possibility for accidents;
Mitigation, monitoring, follow up.

The CHECKLISTS and their relationship to the individual PROJECT TYPES can be edited with the EIA Problem Editor, Descriptors and Rules with the Knowledge Base Editor accessible from the main menue.

Each potential PROBLEM that is evaluated as part of a checklist can be classified into one of the following assessment classes:

	undefined (not yet classified)		no problem (or not applicable)
	marginal problem		small problem
	medium problem		major problem

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