GOUVERNe: new trends in decision support for groundwater governance issues

The GOUVERNe1 project has developed a quality assured information system for the improved governance of groundwater resources at the catchment and sub-catchment levels. It required the design and implementation of a Tool to Inform Debates, Dialogues & Deliberations (TIDDD), combining traditional features of decision support systems (such as organization of the information and tools for exploitation of the information) with an awareness of the new context of management and governance in which they are embedded. Both the information contents and the 'exploration' tools follow the principle of progressive disclosure of information, i.e. the TIDDD does not assume an expert use but it progressively enables the exploration of scientific and technical information, as users require this. The communication style is undertaken in a transparent fashion and all materials are quality assured both in terms of scientific validation, as well as by the community of users; this is done through an appropriate quality assurance protocol for tools in a participatory decision and policy making contexts. This paper describes the process of designing and implementing such a system, as well as its potential application in management contexts. It is based on one of the four case studies of the GOUVERNe project, the Hérault Middle Valley in France.