Managing multidisciplinary model based water management projects

Multidisciplinary model-based water management projects have to follow a complex process and may encounter many problems, related to miscommunication, malpractice, misuse of the model, insufficient problem knowledge and overselling of model capabilities. This leads to model projects, which are not transparent and difficult to audit. The knowledge based system (KBS) discussed here provides guidelines on what to do, derived from an ontological knowledge base (KB) with state-of-the-art knowledge on 'best modelling practice' for teams, which members have different disciplinary backgrounds and play different roles in a project. Furthermore, the KBS monitors what team members actually do and helps generating project reports for various audiences and purposes. Multimedia training material helps novice users to find their way in the KBS. The KBS is organized in a client-server architecture, enabling cooperation in distributed teams. The developers of this KBS learned that arriving at consensus on a process KB for model-based water management has an intrinsic value in itself. Professional users tested the KBS in two series of ten test cases, touching different types of problems and coping with a variety of environmental conditions across Europe. They like the KBS and their numerous comments have significantly improved the KBS. But they also expect that it will be hard to persuade the professional modelling community to use it.