Opportunities and Limitations of GIS‐Based Modeling of Solute Transport at the Regional Scale
PETER A. BURROUGH · SSSA special publication series · 1996
Geographic information systems (GIS)-based modeling of solute transport at the regional scale involves linking three different kinds of activities, namely model building (to describe the physical and chemical processes), data collection (to provide values for model parameters and attributes), and GIS (to provide an organized data structure for the automated handling of the input data to the computations and for the display of results). The development of mathematical model building for specifying physical and chemical processes—from one- to four-dimensional—and increasing in complexity in space and time, is juxtaposed with (i) the collection of data at the regional scale and (ii) the design of current GIS. The basic assumptions and thought structures in present-day GIS, including objects and fields, overlay structures and relational databases and their suitability for hydrological modeling are discussed. The basic principles, advantages and problems of (i) linking data and models, and (ii) linking models and GIS (loose coupling, tight coupling, and embedded coupling where the model is written using GIS functionality) are presented and discussed. Special attention is paid to questions of uncertainty, spatial and temporal variation and upscaling, model calibration, validation and error propagation. The chapter presents practical suggestions for creating successful modeling tools within a specialized GIS environment.