Hydroinformatics in China: overall developments and showcase of accomplishments in the Changjiang River basin

Abstract Over the last few decades, China has experienced tremendous growth and socioeconomic development. This has also been a period of significant transformations in many social and economic sectors, including water management. Starting from revision of policies and regulatory frameworks, modifications of water engineering approaches have been introduced, together with broadening the overall management of river basins and water resources to encompass ecological and other nature services, next to considerations for economic benefits. These water management transformations have also been facilitated and enabled by introducing novel information and communication technologies, very much along the lines that Mike Abbott predicted and promoted as he was developing the field of hydroinformatics. In fact, he was always considering China as a country that would greatly benefit from hydroinformatics technologies as it has been going through rapid socioeconomic development, and, that the field itself would then make progress via novel Chinese applications. This chapter briefly introduces the main water management transformations and challenges that China has faced over the past few decades, and proceeds with presentation of hydroinformatics tools and technologies in the sequence of data→models→knowledge→decision-support applications, as they have been deployed in China. To showcase the use of such technologies in actual water management activities, the example of Changjiang River basin is presented as a case study, with demonstration of applications on flood management. These applications integrate monitored data with a suite of different models for flood forecasting and regulation of water infrastructure - particularly large scaled reservoir groups, where flood management is addressed in conjunction with other water resources functions. Decision support applications, such as to enable broader stakeholder and public participation - the platform serving for river/lake chief system - are also presented.