Decision Support Systems

A Decision Support System (DSS) can be defined in many ways. The working definition the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) uses is, "A spatially based computer application or data that assists a researcher or manager in making decisions." This is quite a broad definition and it needs to be, as the possibilities for types of DSS are limited only by the user group and the developer's imagination. There is no one DSS; they are as diverse as the problems they help solve. This diversity requires that DSSs are built in a variety of ways using the most appropriate methods and tools for the individual application. The skills of potential DSS users vary widely as well, further necessitating multiple approaches to DSS development. Some small, highly trained user groups may want a powerful modeling tool with extensive functionality at the expense of ease of use. Other user groups less familiar with geographic information system (GIS) and spatial data may want an extremely easy to use application for a wide public or otherwise nontechnical audience. The UMESC DSS developers offer our partners a wide variety of technical skills and development options, ranging from the most simple Web page or small application to complex modeling application development.

Types of DSS Tools

The GIS tools fall into one of two categories: general purpose or specific purpose. General-purpose GIS tools are programs such as ARC/INFO and ArcView that have extensive functionality and can be difficult for users unfamiliar with GIS and cartographic principles to learn. Specific-purpose GIS tools are programs that are written by a GIS programmer to provide a user group with specific functions in an easy-to-use package. In the past, specific-purpose GIS tools were written primarily using a macro language such as Avenue (ArcView's macro language) or AML (ARC/INFO's macro language). This method of delivering specific-purpose GIS tools requires that each user have a copy of the host program (ARC/INFO or ArcView) to run the macro language application. The GIS programmers now have a far richer set of tools for application development. Programming libraries with classes for interactive mapping and spatial analysis functions have made it possible to develop specific-purpose GIS tools using industry-standard programming languages that can be compiled and run without a host program (stand-alone). Internet development tools have matured as well, making it possible to develop fairly complex GIS-based programs that users can use through the World Wide Web. The UMESC programmers make extensive use of these development tools and actively search out new and emerging tools and techniques to get the right product in the hands of the decision makers at the right time.

Point of Contact	Project Title
Tim Fox	Percent Edge Tool

• The Percent Edge Tool is a customization of ArcMap that analyzes polygonal shapefiles.
• The Percent Edge Tool calculates area, compactness, perimeter, edge lengths with adjacent polygons, and percentage of edge with adjacent polygons.
• This information can then be summarized into a pivot table and queried.
  Example query: I want to know where are all of the large, compact, woody wetland polygons that share > 50% of their edge with emergent herbaceous wetlands.?

Point of Contact	Project Title
Tim Fox	Adjacency For WinBUGS Tool

• The Adjacency For WinBUGS Tool is a customization of ArcMap.
• The tool iteratively processes each polygon within a selected layer and creates a text file of polygonal adjacency where each polygon is identified by a unique Adj_ID value.
• The output of this tool is used in WinBUGS (MRC Biostatistics Unit Cambridge) by the car.normal, car.l1, and mv.car conditional autoregressive distributions.

Point of Contact	Project Title
Tim Fox	Split By Attribute Tool

• The Split By Attribute Tool is a customization of ArcMap.
• The tool takes a single shapefile and splits it into many shapefiles based on the unique values of a chosen field.
• If the user has made a selection on a shapefile, then only those features that have been selected will be split.
• Each output layer will named with the following structure: user supplied base name + split value.

• The Census Stop Tool is a GIS tool that creates random points along a line layer while maintaining a minimum distance between points.
• The user has the option of selecting one of two random point placement methods.
• The Census Stop Tool is available as an ArcMap 9.x extension.
• This tool is designed to facilitate road based surveys by reducing the potential for double sampling.

Research: Maps, Models, and Tools for Bird Conservation Planning

• Allows managers and planners to rapidly assess landscape attributes and link these attributes with species/habitat information
• Provides resource managers a means to compare the conservation potential of local management units with that of the surrounding county, state, or region
• Can be applied to any taxa or suite of taxa and any landscape, given that spatial data layers representing habitats are available and species/habitat relationships can be defined
• Applicable to many types of wildlife conservation management and planning efforts
• Helps resource managers identify and prioritize those species and habitats most in need of management action
• ArcGIS platform
• Summary of the attributes of CCP GIS Tools and LINK , two GIS decision support tools designed for application to conservation planning

Research: Maps, Models, and Tools for Bird Conservation Planning

• Interactive mapping application displays and serves maps, data, and metadata over the internet
• Helps state and regional bird conservation planners rapidly assess land cover attributes over large areas (counties, states, regions) and link these attributes with bird information
• Analyzes land cover and Breeding Bird Survey data for the continental United States
• Creates breeding bird checklists for any location
• ArcIMS platform: GIS for the internet

Geographic Information System Tools for Conservation Planning

• Allows managers and planners to rapidly assess landscape attributes and link these attributes with species/habitat information
• Provides resource managers a means to evaluate the merits of alternative land management scenarios
• Can be applied to any taxa or suite of taxa and any landscape, given that spatial data layers representing habitats are available and species/habitat relationships can be defined
• Applicable to many types of wildlife conservation management and planning efforts
• Consists of three ArcView 3.x extensions (CCP GIS Query Tool, CCP GIS Edit Tool, CCP GIS Clipping Tool)
• Summary of the attributes of CCP GIS Tools and LINK , two GIS decision support tools designed for application to conservation planning

Submersed Aquatic Vegetation Modeling Output Online

• Statistical model to predict the probability of occurrence of submersed aquatic vegetation in Pool 8 of the Upper Mississippi River on the basis of a few hydrological, physical, and geomorphic variables
• Model takes into consideration flow velocity, wind fetch, bathymetry, growing-season daily water level, and light extinction coefficient in the river and calculates the probability of submersed aquatic vegetation
• Web link to an Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) ArcGIS Server website created at the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center to make model predictions available online and interactive
• Ability to view the spatial data, measure linear distances, and identify features

Mark Twain National Wildlife Refuge and Illinois River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge Decision Support Systems

• Mapping capability of land and biological resources
• Common digital database for information
• Suite of spatial analysis tools
• Scientific expertise for the review of refuge management strategies during the development of Comprehensive Conservation Plans
• Integration of biological and physical themes so that decisions can be made using the best available science and data
• Developed within ArcView 3.x platform

Development of a Decision Support System for John Day Reservoir

• Collaboration between U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Western Fisheries Research Center and USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• Resource managers proposing up to a 100-ft permanent drawdown to benefit native salmonid populations and other wildlife.This drawdown will dewater much of a 23,555-acre refuge on the reservoir (Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge)
• The DSS provided ability to integrate biological and physical themes so that decisions could be made using the best available science and data
• The UMESC assisted Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge to develop a new management plan that will consider options if reservoir drawdown is undertaken
• Developed within ArcView 3.x platform along with Spatial Analyst Extension

Development of a Spatial Decision Support System in Support of the Contaminant Assessment Process at Acadia National Park

• Collaboration between USGS Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends (BEST) Program and USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• Contaminant Assessment Process (CAP) used to assess threats posed by environmental contaminants to refuges, national parks, and other Department of Interior lands by several transport pathways (i.e., wind, groundwater, tidal)
• Built to provide a more attractive and useful alternative to standard Internet-based application currently used
• Three areas of influence were identified: Proximal air areas of influence (AOI; 160-km radius), extended air AOI (320-km radius), and surface water, groundwater and tidal AOI (Maine Coastal Watershed)
• Developed within ArcView 3.x platform

Great Lakes Islands Geographic Information System/Decision Support System

• Great Lakes islands DSS collaborative effort between Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem Team (GLBET) Islands Committee and USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• The UMESC provided GLBET with a stand-alone GIS application for viewing, retrieving, and collecting information regarding the numerous islands in the Great Lakes Basin
• Stand-alone application developed using ESRI MapObjects LT 2 and Visual Basic 6.0

Great Lakes Basin Lake Sturgeon Geographic Information System Database

• Great Lakes Basin Lake Sturgeon GIS Database collaborative effort between Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem Team (GLBET) Lake Sturgeon Committee and USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• The UMESC developed a prototype ESRI ArcIMS (Internet Map Server) webpage for viewing and querying project data related to sampling research collected from several agencies within the Great Lakes Basin.

Middle Mississippi River Decision Support System

• The Middle Mississippi River Decision Support System (MMRDSS) provides a framework to assist decision makers regarding aquatic resource issues in the Middle Mississippi River
• The MMRDSS is designed to provide users with a spatially explicit tool for tasks such as inventorying existing knowledge, developing models to investigate the potential effects of management decisions, generating hypotheses to advance scientific understanding, and developing scientifically defensible studies and monitoring
• Advanced tools were created to generate information and GIS themes including flood frequency, sinuosity, shoreline development, hypsometric integral, Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) measure of river training Structures, and landscape metrics
• Developed within ArcView 3.x platform

Acadia National Park Nutrient Load and Estuarine Response Decision Support System

• Collaboration between USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Acadia National Park, the USGS Water Resources Division (Augusta, Maine), and the USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• The Acadia National Park Nutrient Load and Estuarine Response Decision Support System (NLERDSS) consists of two tools:
  • The purpose of the Nutrient Load and Estuarine Response Tool (NLERT) is to calculate nutrient loading to the Northeast Creek estuary based upon land use composition within the Northeast Creek watershed,
  • The Land Use Polygon Edit Tool (LUPET) gives the user the ability to alter the land use composition within the watershed by making spatially-explicit changes to the land use theme
• The NLERT allows the user to calculate the amount of nutrients output by a user-defined area of interest (AOI) and also compares that AOI to the watershed as a whole in respect to nutrient load and area statistics, as well as describe to the user how the estuary may be impacted due to the nutrient level absorbed
• The NLERT also predicts long-term ecosystem (estuarine) responses to the level of nutrient loading based on numerical thresholds calculated in situ
• Developed within ArcView 3.x platform

Acadia National Park Landscape Scale Conservation and Easement Planning

• Collaboration between USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Acadia National Park, and USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
• Provides a more rigorous and comprehensive assessment of potential parcels to include in the ANP easement program using a landscape perspective
• Park has a legislatively authorized conservation easement program that has been used to provide additional protection to critically important private lands
• Park has used broad criteria to evaluate easements
  • Benefit for resource protection
  • Proximity of easement to park and other easements
• Developed within ArcMap 9.0 platform along with Spatial Analyst extension

Habitat Needs Assessment Query Tool

• Performs habitat analyses on the Upper Mississippi River System
• Gap analyses of habitats
• Provides land cover/land use trend data
• Analyses of more than 500 species
• Data provided:
  • multiyear land cover
  • geomorphic
  • systemic
  • Habitat Rehabilitation and Enhancement Project (HREP) information

Dabbling Duck Models

• Model waterfowl habitat for a scheduled Habitat Rehabilitation and Enhancement Project
• Environmental Systems Research Institute modeling software
• Scoping process
• Comparative analyses
• Alternative to Habitat Suitability Index models

A Decision Support System for the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway

• The Riverway includes the St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers that flow through northwestern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota
• The Riverway is one of the most biologically diverse parks in the Upper Midwest
• The Riverway is at the center of intense economic, political, legal, recreational, and value conflicts because of its proximity to the growing metropolitian area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.
• The DSS framework for this unit of the National Park Service meets many needs of policy makers and resource managers, by providing the following:
  1. Mapping capability of land and biological resources
  2. Common digital database for information
  3. Suite of spatial analysis and visualization tools
  4. Predictive population models
  5. Land and water management alternatives

Another project related to the DSS for the St. Croix has been initiated. In spring 1999, the U.S. Geological Survey's Biological Resources Division (La Crosse, Wisconsin) began a 3-year study of the effects of ammonia on mussels in the St. Croix River funded through the NRPP.

LTRMP Spatial Data Query and Visualization Tool

• Easy-to-use PC-based application developed using MicrosoftVisual Basic and the MapObjects class library
• Distributed on CD-ROM, requires no special hardware or other software
• Includes data for fish, water quality, macroinvertebrates, and vegetation
• Allows users to spatially query the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) component database and display the selected data in conjunction with other spatial data for viewing, printing, and analysis
• Ability to define an area spatially, then extract the LTRMP trend data for that area
• Selected records can be viewed from within the Query Tool, or exported in a comma-delimited ASCII format
• The Query Tool allows users to select a study pool, a base map, and resource component, zoom the area of interest, then create a spatial subset by graphically or logically selecting sampling sites
• Base maps of land/water, land cover/use, major roads, and control structures can be displayed in conjunction with sampling sites