Developing a Web-GIS Based Integrated Management System to Support Restoring Estuarine Circulation of the Geumgang Estuary in South Korea

An integrated web-GIS based system was developed to support stakeholder discussions on the scientific issues related to the restoring estuarine circulation of the Geumgang Estuary as a part of the Integrated Estuarine Management System Development Project (2013~2018). The system consists of mainly three subsystems; database system to help identifying problems, modeling system to predict environmental impacts for the diverse management scenarios, and decision support system to help facilitating stakeholder conflicts in the decision process. All raw surveyed and monitored data and model outputs particularly focused on the diverse sluice opening scenarios are stored in the database and it is used for running the decision support system to select the best scenario for restoring estuarine circulation. The system turned out useful to reduce the stakeholder conflicts by providing scientific information and showing available technical options for the restoration. However, further system upgrading efforts such as automatic data link or transform between the subsystem are necessary to extend system applicability because the subsystems are currently designed in operating standalone mode.