A Case for Data Sharing and Database Networks in the Management of Water Resources and the Environment

Solutions to water-related problems must begin and end with good information and data. The gathering of data, their quality, comparability, and management, who controls and distributes them, how they are used, by whom, and toward what ends are potent determinants of the well-being of individuals and nations. Flowing water carries within itself its own information, and because watercourses tend to be very dynamic systems, water data are consequently almost always in one degree or another estimates, extrapolations, and, sometimes, even speculation. This study analyzes these issues and emphasizes the importance of cooperative data collection, the sharing of data, and argues the necessity for establishing a nexus of distributed water information systems, offering a specific model based on new relational software.