Exploration on Digital Water Conservancy

Abstract The definition of “Digital Water Conservancy” is proposed on the basis of “Digital Earth” in this paper. The necessity, feasibility, construction principles of “Digital Water Conservancy” are analysed, and the framework of it is proposed, that is: key technology, basic infrastructure, and comprehensive applications. The key technology is composed of spatial information technology, management information technology, and comprehensive information technology; the basic infrastructure consists of National Information Infrastructure (NII), National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), special data of water conservancy and security measures; the comprehensive applications are made up of the management system, decision‐making models, and application systems. The above three levels supply hardware and software to water conservancy around data acquisition and updating, processing and accessing, information extraction and analysis, propagation of information, building and updating of databases, web and transmission, and decision‐making support. A spatial information infrastructure, special data of water conservancy, and decision‐making models are the core and are discussed in detail. Digital Water Conservancy is a large and complex systematic engineering, but it can be regarded as being composed of points (reservoirs and lakes), lines (rivers and their watersheds), and regions (oceans). A digital reservoir analysis is carried out in Xue Ye Reservoir, Shandong Province to provide experience for informatisation of water conservancy in China.