Water in South Africa is becoming a scarce and important resource and therefore has to be
managed and protected in order to ensure sustainability, equity and efficiency. The SAGDT
is designed to provide methods and tools to assist groundwater professionals and regulators
in making informed decisions concerning groundwater use, management and protection,
while taking into account that groundwater forms part of an integrated water resource. The
SAGDT is spatially-based software, which includes:
⢠A GIS interface to allow a user to import shape files, various CAD formats and georeferenced
images. The GIS interface also provides for spatial queries to assist in the
decision-making process. The GIS interface contains default data sets in the form of
shape files and grid files depicting various hydrogeological parameters across South
Africa.
⢠A risk assessment interface introduces fuzzy logic based risk assessments to assist in
decision making by systematically considering all possibilities. Included risk assessments
relate to the sustainability of a groundwater resource, vulnerability of an aquifer, pollution
of a groundwater resource (including seawater intrusion), human health risks associated
with a polluted groundwater resource, impacts of changes in groundwater on aquatic
ecosystems and waste site impact on an area.
⢠Third-party software such as a shape file editor, an interpolator, a georeference tool, a
unit converter and a groundwater dictionary.
⢠A report generator, which automatically generates documentation concerning the results
of the risk assessment performed and the input values for the risk assessment.
⢠A scenario wizard for the novice to obtain step by step instructions in setting up a
scenario. All case studies presented in this thesis is available in the scenario wizard.
⢠The SAGDT allows problem solving at a regional scale or a local scale, depending on the
problem at hand.
This thesis discusses the origin, research, development and implementation of the SAGDT.
Case studies are included to demonstrate the working of the SAGDT. They include:
⢠Vunerability (Fish River Lighthouse)
⢠Waste Site (Bloemfontein Suidstort)
⢠Sustainability (De Hoop)
⢠Mine (Van Tonder Opencast)
The SAGDT relies heavily on the expertise of hydrogeologists, assumptions and
approximations of real world conditions. Together with the heterogeneities present in
groundwater systems it is impossible to guarantee the accuracy of the methodologies and
this must be taken into consideration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-12122007-074609 |
| Date | 12 December 2007 |
| Creators | Dennis, Stefanus Rainier |
| Contributors | Prof GJ van Tonder |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-12122007-074609/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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