Water Ethics Web Engine - A Web-Based Ethical Decision-Making Framework

Increasing adoption of sensor networks and control technologies in water systems are leading to the unprecedented ability to sense and control water environments. This will allow automated and precise control of water systems and distribution of impacts, both positive and negative, to communities. At the same time, the increase in system complexity means that humans will cede direct decision-making power to decision support technologies, e.g. data algorithms. These trends define a novel challenge to incorporate human-centered and deliberate ethical concepts into algorithmic decision support processes for water systems. Towards this end, we propose the Water Ethics Web Engine, (WE)², an integrated and generalized web framework to incorporate voting-based ethical and normative preferences into water resources decision-support schemes. We demonstrate how this framework can be used in a real-time decision-support workflow to respond to flood events. Finally, we share our generalized framework and its cyber components openly with the research community.