Towards a Hydroinformatics for Asia

This conference raises new issues in hydroinformatics that have been little, if at all, considered earlier . Thus, although the scope of the present conference is so wide that this contribution cannot be expected to have much immediate influence, its subject matter is of such vital importance to the overall future of its subject that a considerable effort has been expended here upon enunciating the developments that can be expected as hydroinformatics enters a new era in its development, and one that is certain to be marked through and by its extension into Asia . In short, this is because hydroinformatics is transformed as it passes from a modern condition of society, associated with a domination of knowers, into a post-modern condition, such as is associated much more with a domination of consumers of knowledge . Correspondingly, in hydroinformatics today the most important tool is the Internet and the predominant delivery vehicle is the mobile telephone, while almost all of its developments become absorbed in what is increasingly called a ‘software-as-a-service’ paradigm . All of these developments are so much more in tune with Asian values and customs than is the case in the West that the centre of gravity of hydroinformatics must pass increasingly from the West to the East . This feature, that is already abundently clear in other areas of technological and sociotechnological endeavour, now finds its expression in the transmutation of a hydroinformatics of the quantities into a hydroinformatics of the qualities . In conclusion the introduction of a relatively new mathematics of the qualities is introduced as a means of discoursing on this development .

The holding of this conference in The Islamic Republic of Iran introduces an own serendipity, in that it becomes possible to introduce this development in terms of the three economies, these being the economy of humanity, the economy of nature and the economy of the divine governance of the world, to use the Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition of this third component . The opportunity has thus been grasped to present this development in a way that would be difficult, if not impossible, in the West .