*Article* **Environmental Decision Support Systems as a Service: Demonstration on CE-QUAL-W2 Model**

**Yoav Bornstein 1, Ben Dayan 2, Amir Cahn 1, Scott Wells <sup>3</sup> and Mashor Housh 1,\***


**Abstract:** An environmental decision support system (EDSS) can be used as an important tool for the rehabilitation and preservation of ecosystems. Nonetheless, high assimilation costs (both money and time) are one of the main reasons these tools are not widely adopted in practice. This work presents a low-cost paradigm of "*EDSS as a Service*." This paradigm is demonstrated for developing a water quality EDSS as a service that utilizes the well-known CE-QUAL-W2 model as a kernel for deriving optimized decisions. The paradigm is leveraging new open-source technologies in software development (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm) with cloud computing to significantly reduce the assimilation costs of the EDSS for organizations and researchers working on the rehabilitation and preservation of water bodies.

**Keywords:** CE-QUAL-W2; EDSS; SaaS
