The main contribution of this paper is a simple, general framework for the development of model-based DSSs for water resource management. The proposed DSS framework was developed in the context of the EU funded project DITTY (Development of an information technology tool for the management of southern European lagoons under the influence of river-basin runoff). In this project, all DSS applications were related to the management of Southern European lagoons. The diversity of socio-economic and environmental characteristics of the considered case studies motivated the development of a general model-based DSS structure into which all site-specific decision problems could be cast. For this reason, the proposed framework is not limited to coastal lagoon applications, rather it is applicable in a variety of water resource management problems, since it represents an open, modular and simple structure which may guide even inexpert users in developing their own DSS and gaining confidence in it. Another contribution of the paper is the model-based DSS designed according to the proposed framework for a real decision problem faced by local administrators in the Sacca di Goro lagoon (Italy).
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature on water management DSSs. Section 3 describes the proposed model-based DSS framework. The application to the Sacca di Goro lagoon is detailed in Section 4, while the description of other case studies of the DITTY project and a discussion on strengths and weaknesses of the proposed DSS framework is reported in Section 5. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 6.