BibSonomy ::  publication ::

The computer controlled operating environments of such facilities as automated factories, nuclear power plants, telecommunication centres and space stations are continually becoming more complex. The situation is similar, if not even more apparent and urgent, in the case of water. Water is not only mankind's most valuable natural resource, but one which is in increasingly limited supply. The fresh water is the vital natural resource which supports all environmental activities, that is, natural economy, and all human socio-economic activities, that is, the artificial economy. The pressure for a sustainable control and exploration of water and thus for the peaceful co-existence of human- & hydro-economies is not only a human, socio-economic pressure, but it is the question of life and death. Hydroinformatics - the nascent technology concerned with the flow of information related to the flow of fluids and all that they convey - is probably the best possible answer yet proposed to the problem of the control of the waters, the very arteries and veins of the biosphere.