ICMS is a PC-based software product, developed to provide a powerful, new Decision Support System (DSS) framework in which to embed models and tools for analysis and presentation of environmental options for environmental managers. It is available under licence from CSIRO Land and Water through the ICMS web site where it is fully described and supported.

Description
ICMS has been designed for people who aren't professional programmers or modellers but have some modelling knowledge and can write some code. It allows such people to write new and/or import existing models (written in ICMS and distributed in ICMS model libraries) which can be linked to build up an integrated representation of a system (eg a river basin) containing linked suites of modelled processes. It is particularly suited to scenario exploration - ie exploring and comparing the impacts of different settings of input conditions (eg distribution of land use, or daily rainfall patterns) on key output indicators.

The role of iCAM in developing ICMS
While CSIRO team members developed and implemented the architecture, iCAM played the critical role of informing the design process by designing, coding, testing and deploying models of catchment processes (eg rainfall/runoff, overland and instream routing, pollutant generation) within ICMS.  A formal collaboration between iCAM and CSIRO ran from mid-1998 to 31 December 2000 and continues to this day.

ICMS has 6 key components:

1. ICMSBuilder is the core module which provides for the building of modeling applications.
2. Model Libraries which allow model developers to package their models in such a way that they can be distributed to other ICMS users.  For example, ICMS is distributed with a core set of model libraries containing rainfall-runoff, instream routing, and pollutant generation models.  ICMS users can create, import, edit and export model libraries.
3. ICMS Views which allow programmers to build tailored interfaces to ICMS.
4. Run Results Libary which allows users to store and then compare the results of running the same suite of models with different input conditions.
5. ICMS web site which provides a repository for ICMS projects, model libraries, ICMS versions and other information is relevant to the ICMS community.
6. Sets of tutorials and exercises which are distributed with ICMS and support independent and group learning of ICMS.  These materials also form part of ICMS workshop materials.

ICMS is distributed under a non-commercial software licence agreement with individuals and/or organizations which is initiated from the ICMS web site.