Author: Roger M. Miranda

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 1158

ISBN-13:

This dissertation describes the development of a decision support tool designed to facilitate and enhance collaborative binational decision making associated with integrated transboundary water quality planning and management in the Lower Rio Grande/Río Bravo. The Lower Rio Grande Water Quality Initiative Decision Support System (LRGWQIDSS) is the result of a multidisciplinary effort to integrate the results of qualitative social science research and traditional and novel engineering and geographic information systems (GIS) methods associated with the modeling, analysis, and visualization of watershed, water quality and natural resources data. The LRGWQIDSS incorporates information currently used by urban planning and natural resource management organizations working along the Texas-Mexico border area and provides a means to analyze and display the information in a way that is useful to institutional and noninstitutional actors involved in transboundary water quality planning efforts. The analysis of the institutional arrangements currently in place to protect water quality in the Lower Rio Grande/Río Bravo played an important role in the design and development of the LRGWQIDSS and its successful application. The tool’s development represents a case study in the importance of the role of institutional analysis in the successful development of decision support systems for transboundary water quality management