Informatics for Sustainable Water Planning and Policy

Abstract:  When seeking to ensure water availability and sustainability it is vital to know previous policy initiatives and actions.  Identifying what has been done, and what did or did not work can help guide future strategies.  The field of informatics and computer aided modeling can help illuminate text based data in new ways.   We present a novel approach to systematic text analysis to model what decision makers deemed important via stated goals and recorded recommendations in planning documentation. 

We analyze the interaction of key terms in a document and how key terms of different editions of the document changes over time.   Policy recommendations and goals or objective sections presented in the Texas State Water Plans are the primary data source.  The plans are written by the Texas Water Development Board to inform stakeholders within Texas of the status of water resources and projections for possible future supplies, and to recommend sustainable actions to decision making entities to ensure future water availability.  We analyze and visualize eight volumes of the Texas State Water Plans, representing the plans for the years 1961, 1968, 1984, 1990, 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007.  The purpose of this research is to identify sustainability and availability objectives between the two sections within the same document as well as over time.  In terms of groundwater, this approach allows users to determine when groundwater was considered, and if complimentary key words or concepts were also deemed important in those same editions.  Using informatics to analyze policies is a systematic approach that lawmakers may use when creating sustainable water policies to ensure continuity or discern inconsistencies in policies and, ultimately, improve policymaking and planning for continued water availability.