CUAHSI HIS Survey at Berkeley Seongeun Jeong and Xu Liang Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering UC Berkeley

1. Introduction Survey goal: understand the use of hydrologic information and systems at Berkeley from an interdisciplinary perspective Participation: 29 people from 5 departments, including LBNL, participated Survey methods: Web- based survey and paper survey

2. Results and Analysis Category 1. Systems/software Preferred platforms and available network systems  Windows users > 70%  Easy-to-use software  Basic network functions (e.g., data archiving and printing) are available  System administrators having Multiple roles and tasks (e.g., server management) Provide effective and easy-to- use interface  User can easily connect matlab (or other softwares) to HIS data 57% 55% 34% 17%

Category 2. Data and sources Current status and problems  On an average, 30 % of total research time is spent on tasks related to data processing  Difficulties in using hydrologic data  Have to access many different data sources with very different interfaces and data organizations  Lack of data visualization tools  Large uncertainties associated with data  Lack of basic functions to conduct data analysis (e.g., checking consistency, basic statistics, etc.) before downloading the data  People use well established data providers such as UGSG and NCDC 21% 7% 10% 3% 45% 17%

Category 3. Needs for a data system from research, applications, and education perspectives Needs to address common problems that people encounter  Participants indicated the lack of basic functionalities in most of the current data sources  100 % of the participants say they need to have the ease of getting data  40 % say complicated data system will be helpful, but not necessary Quick and easy-to-use visualization is important to check datasets before the user downloads the data  Most needed functionalities: Data visualization & basic statistical functions Necessity for complicated data system 41% 45% 7%

Needs to integrate various data sources in a single Web system  People prefer to search and retrieve various data through a single web-based system Needs to provide easy access to various data sources Needs to provide assess to the existing popular data providers Needs to provide a user- friendly connection to popular softwares for further in-depth data analysis Preferred data acquisition methods Category 3. (Continued) 52% 21% 10% 7%

Link hydrologic information to a variety type of data for diverse use of hydrologic information in research, applications, and education. For example:  Modeling such as hydrological, atmospheric, groundwater, and water quality modeling  Calibration and validation of numerical models  Ecosystem modeling (e.g., climate/plant interactions, relationship of species meta-population with water management, wetland dynamics, etc.)  Watershed and river restoration Category 3. (Continued)

Category 4. CUAHSI HIS One thirds (1/3) recognized CUAHSI HIS Expected Infrastructure and services from CUAHIS HIS  Capability of data sharing (e.g., easy to ingest data into and to retrieve data from HIS)  Standard data transferability (e.g., temporal and spatial resolution conversion)  Support of various data formats (e.g., Ascii, Bin, HDF, etc.)  Easy data configuration  User-friendly cataloguing and indexing  Serve people in other fields (e.g., ecology)  Single interface, web-based data system  Data visualization  Basic statistic analysis functions  Easy connection to other popular softwares (e.g., Matlab, Excel, GIS, Splus, etc.) for further in-depth analysis  Open source approach  Complicated data system is helpful but not necessary  Prototype its integrated system, and receive feedbacks

3. Conclusion Hydrology-related research applications from the five departments at Berkeley are diverse The identified problems in the use of hydrologic information are common among the different fields Focus on basic problems (e.g., quick visualization for data validation) that were not adequately addressed Provide an IT environment to facilitate interdisciplinary research capacity at Berkeley