This last point was the culmination of the first workshop, and served as the framework (Figure 2) for a GIS-based decision support system that was employed in the second workshop. Also of note was the development throughout this workshop of a shared conception of the Cooum system that was rather different from that on which previous management interventions had been based. This understanding of the Cooum environmental system moved beyond the simple bio-physical model of a river system to one that, for example, encompassed the activities of the population of Chennai in consuming water and producing sewage, and of the multiple and various agencies in managing (or not) aspects of the situation. Workshop participants described it not so much as a natural river system, but as an “urban system” and a “waste disposal system.”