CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Summary as of June 16, 2004 by David R. Maidment

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Participants Core Team: D. Maidment, J. Helly, P. Kumar, M. Piasecki, R. Hooper, J. Duncan Collaborators: V. Lakshmi, X. Liang, Y. Liang, U. Lall, L. Poff, K. Reckhow, D. Tarboton, I. Zaslavsky, C. Zheng

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) Project This a 2-year project to develop an RFP for the Center for Hydrologic Information (CHI) and perform preliminary research and prototyping for HIS For years 3 and onwards, all funding will be competitively awarded by NSF/CUAHSI –Center for Hydrologic Information –HydroInformatics Thematic Centers

Hydrologic Information Science Hydrologic Information Science is that branch of hydrologic science that deals with the precise description of the condition of the earth’s waters, and of their surrounding natural environment. It is concerned with hydrologic data acquisition, archiving, dissemination, assembly, analysis and display. The measure of success of this science is the degree of accuracy and comprehensiveness of depiction of hydrologic environments at any location and scale in space and time. We should develop and publicize a research agenda for this science

CUAHSI HIS is meant to facilitate: Data Acquisition –quicker, easier, usable formats Data Archiving –experimental and regional data for HO’s Data Assembly –bringing the data together, data model Data Analysis –visualization, statistics, hypothesis testing.

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems Work of the five project partners –CUAHSI –San Diego Supercomputer Center –University of Texas –University of Illinois –Drexel University Involving the collaborators……

CUAHSI Program Office Based in Washington DC Executive Director is Rick Hooper Communications Director is Jon Duncan –Jon is the point of contact for the HIS project –Hydrologic observatory project defines roles for HIS –HO Meeting at Utah State, Logan, on August at which we have to present HIS plan

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems Work of the five project partners –CUAHSI –San Diego Supercomputer Center –University of Texas –University of Illinois –Drexel University Involving the collaborators……

San Diego Supercomputer Center Principal technology partner for HIS John Helly is PI, assisted by Don Sutton and Tiffany Houghton –CUAHSI HIS web site ( –Hydrologic Digital Library for local storage of any kind of file –Metadata definition of file types (.mif) –HydroViewer for viewing locally published files Ilya Zaslavsky deals with internet mapping –Multiview ArcIMS viewer for viewing locally published maps (

New Concept of Publication New WayOld Way

Arbitrary Digital Objects An ADO can be any kind of file Described by metadata in.mif format Stored in a local digital library Accessed using HydroViewer Federated network of libraries across country

System Architecture: Interfaces

HydroViewer GUI Neuse River Watershed Collection HydroViewer Demo by John Helly

CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Systems Work of the five project partners –CUAHSI –San Diego Supercomputer Center –University of Texas –University of Illinois –Drexel University Involving the collaborators……

University of Texas David Maidment is PI, assisted by Jon Goodall, Gil Strassberg, Venkatesh Merwade Hydrologic data model development –atmospheric water, surface water, subsurface water –interoperable analysis environment

Information Sources Analysis and Visualization Hydrologic Information Data Model CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System GIS Experiments Simulation Monitoring Climate models 2. Integrate data into a coherent structure 3. Do science 1. Assemble data from many sources Hypothesis testing Data Assimilation Remote sensing Statistics

Created first for the Neuse basin and then for each of the following CUAHSI Observatory Planning basins Digital Watershed: An implementation of the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information Data Model for a particular region

Neuse Basin: Coastal aquifer system * From USGS, Water Resources Data Report of North Carolina for WY 2002 Section line Beaufort Aquifer

A 3-D Volume Model of the Beaufort Aquifer Beaufort confining layer Beaufort aquifer Built by Gil Strassberg from borehole information collected by the Neuse basin case study team

RUC20 – Output Samples Precipitable water in the atmosphere Cross-section of relative humidity Images created from Unidata’s Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) Wind vectors and wind speed (shading)

Surface Water Information ArcIMS Web Server displaying data compiled in Neuse HO Planning Study

SDSC Multiview Map Viewer

Neuse basin data in Multiview

ArcIMS Website uses data stored in an ArcGIS geodatabase From Utah State University Adding more ArcIMS map services…

University of Illinois Praveen Kumar is PI, assisted by Benjamin Ruddell Developing “Modelshed” which is an generalized hydrologic modeling and data analysis environment built on top of Arc Hydro Focused on applications integrating hydrology and climate modeling

Flow Time Time Series HydrographyHydro Network Channel System Drainage System Arc Hydro Components

What is a Modelshed? A volumetric spatial model unit, registered in three dimensions by a GIS, with which time-varying data, model fluxes, spatial relationships and descriptive metadata are associated

AreaLink The AreaLink connects otherwise unrelated spatial coverages and zones, to allow interaction

OrthogonalLink Curvilinear ModelshedTypes may establish orthogonal links to neighboring X and Y Modelsheds

Applications: Helping Raster & Vector Talk

In this example, we are using a 30km climate simulation grid to simulate moisture fluxes. We want to study fluxes in grid zones dominated by forests, with elevations greater than 500ft. Datasets used: grid polygon layer, DEM, USGS land cover, climate simulation output data

Drexel University Michael Piasecki is PI, assisted by Luis Bermudez Goal is to study metadata languages and standards to find what is most suitable for hydrology Concept hierarchies stored in “ontologies” described in OWL (Ontology Web Language)

ESML – Earth Science Markup Language From the Information Technology & Systems Center of the University of Alabama Defines documents in XML to describe any format file with the required elements for a computer program to interpret the data Example of an ESML file describe the file Syntactic Metadata

Define concepts Model Ontology Hydrologic domain Classes Properties Facets Relations Metadata e.g. ISO Markup Languages e.g. GML, ESML XML schemas Extended elements New elements Create XML Schemas Match elements Select best encoding Available Models e.g. Arc Hydro Create tools to facilitate its use: e.g. editor, searcher Cataloging activities e.g. GCMD Methodology

<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd= … hydroml = iso= … <xsd:element ref=“hydroml:point" minOccurs=“2“maxOccurs="unbounded/> … … Thalweg BankLines Floodlines CrossSection 1. Domain: Natural Channels 2. Definition of concepts: Cross Section is composed of two or more points 4. Match elements: ISO /DIS – 2001 MD_GeometricObjectTypeCode + point 5. Create XML Schema: Cross Section Point CrossM Elevation 2..* Channel Feature Reach Code River Code 3. Definition of classes: Properties facets relations double

Hydrologic Information System Data Organization Hydrologic Digital Library (Digital files of hydrologic information in any form, indexed by a metadata catalog) Flux Assessment System Process model domains Time seriesGIS data Space-time gridsStatistics Hydrologic Data Model Application Systems

Involving the Collaborators….. We have a good start How do we involve the collaborators in a productive way? How should we interact with the Hydrologic Observatory proposers (meeting at Utah State on August 24-25)? Possible CUAHSI “all hands” meeting at SDSC on August 12-13