Journal of Hydroinformatics In Press, Uncorrected Proof © IWA Publishing 2012  |  doi:10.2166/hydro.2012.178

Towards a hydroinformatics for China

M. B. Abbott and Z. Vojinovic

Director, Knowledge Engineering BVBA, B-1180, Brussels, Belgium and Co-Director, European Institute for Industrial Leadership (EIIL), B-1180, Brussels, Belgium
UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, 2611AX Delft, The Netherlands E-mail: Z.Vojinovic@unesco-ihe.org

First received 15 November 2011; accepted in revised form 1 February 2012. Available online 9 April 2012

The relation of hydroinformatics to modern science is considered in relation to the origins and nature of modern science itself and to the technology that has assured the predominance of the European peoples over the peoples of most of the rest of the world for some 250 years. The current increasingly rapid reversal of this predominance is introduced with special reference to Asia in general and China in particular. This reversal is seen as a consequence of a transmutation in societies generally from modern conditions to postmodern conditions. The relation between knowledge providers and knowledge consumers is then introduced and related to the advent of the Internet and further to the World Wide Web, and further again to mobile devices. It is explained that the numerical predominance of China in access to the Web and to mobile telephony has proceeded alongside Chinese government initiatives that have supported this social development. The present contribution follows upon one with the same main title that was directed specifically to the Islamic world and another directed more generally to North East Asia. Since this paper is directed almost exclusively towards China, it traces some developments currently occurring in China that exemplify its theses.

Keywords: internet; knowledge societies; software-as-a-service

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