State of Colorado Water Plan : A Proposal for a GIS Tool to Monitor Progress

As you know, Colorado has produced its State Water Plan. In response and to create a mechanism that will allow stakeholders to monitor progress on the goals included in it, I wrote a proposal for the South Platte basins to create a tool that would compare goals with actual results and show the variances. The proposal documented all the goals and objectives in the plan pertaining to the South Platte River Basin according to their various interests: municipal, industrial, agricultural, environmental, and recreational. At a conference that attended, the head of the GIS division of the State of Colorado Office of Information Technology, Jon Gottsegen, stated that Governor John Hickenlooper desired to see all the geographic elements in the plan on a map. With that directive, my proposal suggested that the comparison of Plan goals and objectives and the actual results display using the Colorado Decision Support System (CDSS), an online mapping tool, as the base. The State of Colorado’s Engineer (SEO) employs the CDSS to manage water resources within the state. I presented the initial draft of the proposal to the Metro Round Table’s Education Committee for their initial feedback and review. After incorporating improvements into the proposal, I submitted an outline to the MacArthur Foundation to solicit funds and obtain further feedback. I await a response from the Foundation.