Hydrologic Information System for the Nation Ilya Zaslavsky Spatial Information Systems Lab San Diego Supercomputer Center UCSD EPA talk, February 1,

San Diego Supercomputer Center Founded in 1985, as one of the five original supercomputer centers, funded by the National Science Foundation 400 employees Advanced research in high- performance computing and networking R&D and cyberinfrastructure projects: in neuroscience, geology, astronomy, environmental sciences, molecular biology, hydrology SDSC building on UCSD campus

SDSC Spatial Information Systems Lab Research and system development Services-based spatial information integration infrastructure, CI projects Mediation services for spatial data, query processing, map assembly services Long-term spatial data preservation Spatial data standards and technologies for online GIS (SVG, WMS/WFS, markup and services) Support of spatial data projects at SDSC and beyond services In Geosciences (GEON, CUAHSI, CBEO,…) In regional development (NIEHS SRP, CRN…) In Neurosciences (BIRN, CCDB) Contact:

Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. An organization representing more than one hundred United States universities, receives support from the National Science Foundation to develop infrastructure and services for the advancement of hydrologic science and education in the U.S US Universities as of July 2008

CUAHSI HIS: NSF support through 2012 (GEO) Partners: Academic: 11 NSF hydrologic observatories, CEO:P projects, LTER, CZO… Government: USGS, EPA, NCDC, NWS, state and local Commercial: Microsoft, ESRI, Kisters International: Australia, UK Standardization: OGC, WMO (Hydrology Domain WG); adopted by USGS, NCDC, Army Corps of Eng An online distributed system to support the sharing of hydrologic data from multiple repositories and databases via standard water data service protocols; software for data publication, discovery, access and integration. What is the CUAHSI HIS? UT-Austin, SDSC/UCSD, Utah State U, Idaho State U, Drexel U, U of So. Carolina PI: D. R. Maidment (UT-Austin)

Rainfall & Snow Water quantity and quality Remote sensing Water Data Modeling Meteorology Soil water

Sources of Observations Data

Observation Stations Ameriflux Towers (NASA & DOE)NOAA Automated Surface Observing System USGS National Water Information SystemNOAA Climate Reference Network Map for the US Build a common window on water data using web services  TOWARDS INTEGRATED WATER INFORMATION

9 Getting Water Data (the old way) Different Query Pages Different Query Responses

CUAHSI Observations Data Model

Web Pages versus Web Services Uses Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) Uses WaterML (a Markup Language for water data)

Standard Water Data Services Set of query functions Returns data in WaterML NWIS Daily Values (discharge), NWIS Ground Water, NWIS Unit Values (real time), NWIS Instantaneous Irregular Data, EPA STORET, NCDC ASOS, DAYMET, MODIS, NAM12K, USGS SNOTEL, ODM (multiple sites) Next Step: WaterML 2.0; OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group

International Standardization of WaterML 13 OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group Towards an agreed upon- feature model - observations model - semantics Expressed as WaterML 2.0 By organizing- Interoperability Experiments and pilots, standard design activities, webinars… First OGC/WMO HydroDWG workshop : at Ispra, Italy, March 15-18, 2010

Test bed HIS Servers Central HIS servers ArcGIS Matlab IDL, R MapWindow Excel Programming (C#, VB..) Desktop clients Customizable web interface (DASH) HTML - XML WSDL - SOAP Modeling (OpenMI) Global search (Hydroseek) Water Data Web Services, WaterML Controlled vocabularies Metadata catalogs Ontology ETL services HIS Lite Servers External data providers Deployment to test beds Other popular online clients ODM DataLoader Streaming Data Loading Ontology tagging (Hydrotagger) WSDL and ODM registration Data publishing ODMTools Server config tools HIS Central Registry & Harvester Hydrologic Information System Service Oriented Architecture HIS Desktop

15 Built for data –Storage –Loading –Analysis –Publication HIS Software free of charge HIS Server Real-time Sensors WaterOneFlow Web Service Data Archives Outside Users, HIS Central, HydroDesktop Local Users ODM Tools HIS Server SQL Server Observations Data Model Database

HIS Central – Catalog and Search 16

Managing Varying Semantics Nitrogen: e.g. NWIS parameter # 625 is labeled ‘ammonia + organic nitrogen‘, Kjeldahl method is used for determination but not mentioned in parameter description. In STORET this parameter is referred to as Kjeldahl Nitrogen. And: Dissloved oxygen acre feetacre-feet micrograms per kilogram micrograms per kilgram FTUNTU mhoSiemens ppmmg/kg In measurement units… In parameter names…

Semantic Tagging of Harvested Variables

20 Service registry and metadata catalog –Networks –Sites –Variables –Search Keywords Does not store actual observation data Example: GetSitesInBox query function HIS Central Services HICentral Web Service

GetValues Requests Per Day from HIS Central

22 HydroDesktop Capabilities Add shapefiles to map Change symbology and labels Print and export map GIS toolbox GIS Search for data Download data Display time series Export data Hydrology

Hydroseek Supports search by location and type of data across multiple observation networks including NWIS, Storet, and academic data

Visualization and Analysis of Large Datasets ► Tiled wall ► OLAP cubes for repositories ► OLAP cubes for catalogs EPA STORET water quality repository USGS NWIS catalog: measurement totals for selected nutrients over decades

How we work with agencies on web service access to observational data 1.Establish an agreement with the agency on joint development of water data services, identify agency partners (ideally, with time to support joint work) 2.Identify the scope of the service, databases to be exposed, and access control, assign network and vocabulary codes 3.Map semantics of the service to WaterML semantics, and verify with the agency 4.Include discussion of agency data and interoperability issues in the context of OGC Hydrology Domain WG (if needed) 5.Develop a first draft of the web service 6.Unit testing, over a series of validation cases developed jointly with the agency 7.Harvest an observations metadata catalog for agency data, to be housed either at SDSC or at the agency 8.Develop a procedure for catalog updates 9.Register the water data service at HISCentral (including mapping of variables to ontology terms), and test it using HydroSeek and HydroExcel. Document the service 10.Review and test the service together with the agency, for possible approval as “operational”

Federal Agency Water Data Services at HISCentral (10/09) Network NameSite CountValue CountEarliest ObservationNotes NWISDV /1/1900 WaterML-compliant GetValues service from NWIS, catalog ingested EPA /1/1900 SOAP wrapper over WQX services, catalog harvested NWISUV DAYS WaterML-compliant GetValues Service, catalog ingested NCDC ISH *1/1/2005 WaterML-compliant GetValues service from NCDC, catalog harvested NCDC ISD /1/1892 WaterML-compliant GetValues service from NCDC, catalog harvested NWISIID /9/1867 SOAP wrapper over NWIS web site, catalog harvested NWISGW /1/1900 SOAP wrapper over NWIS web site, catalog harvested RIVERGAGES /1/2000 WaterML compliant REST services from Army Corps of Engineers

Integration with other infrastructures Technical: with real time data management middleware: – OpenSource DataTurbine: Communities: – Superfund Basic Research Program (NIEHS) – CZOs (Boulder Creek, Stroud Water Research Center) – South East Asia/Malaysia (

CUAHSI Water Data Services 28 Map Integrating NWIS, STORET, & Climatic Sites 47 services 15,000 variables 1.8 million sites 9 million series 4.3 billion data values The largest water data catalog in the world

Summary CUAHSI HIS = Cyberinfrastructure for managing and publishing observational data – Supports many types of point observational data – Overcomes syntactic and semantic heterogeneity using a standard data model and communication language, controlled vocabularies, and ontology management (created a comprehensive ontology of hydrologic parameters) – End-to-end infrastructure: from publishing water data to discovery, access, retrieval, analysis – Supports a national network of observatory test beds, and links to most important federal water data repositories – Maintains national registry of services (the largest in the world) WaterML is a standard language for consistently communicating water observations data from academic and government sources. – already adopted by several federal agencies – Further enhanced through WMO/OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group Already deployed at multiple locations; free and open source

Working with EPA Data Wrapping WQX services; Ingesting STORET OLAP over STORET, and web based mapping application: Ontology work: – Semantic wiki: – Recent ontology:

How we can collaborate Regular catalog updates Development on water quality data services Portal for accessing hydrologic time series Support of hydrologic data center (proposal to NSF?) Ontology development Mechanism: – MOU between EPA and CUAHSI on water data services – Involvement in HydroDWG Water Quality IE and AIP-3 /WebHome /WebHome