Significant advances have been made in the use of spatial and hydrologic models to quantify the impact of BMP/LID practices on water quality, but little research has focused on calculating the implementation costs associated with these BMP's when integrated with a decision support system (DSS). This research project had three phases. The first was a review and selection of a public domain water quality model. Hydrologic Simulation Program in FORTRAN (HSPF), an unsteady flow model, was selected

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... s the hydrologic and water quality program. The second phase assessed the potential to link the model to a desktop Geographic Information System (GIS). The third phase focused on identifying BMP's that are often included in low impact development strategies, including implementation, operation, and maintenance cost data. This information was collected from several national sites and loaded into a database, which was later linked to the site's individual BMP's housed in the GIS. This allowed development costs for different combinations or configurations of BMP's to be calculated in real time.