RiverML: Standardizing the Communication of River Model Data (Invited)

RiverML is a proposed language for conveying a description of river channel and floodplain geometry and flow characteristics through the internet in a standardized way. A key goal of the RiverML project is to allow interoperability between all hydraulic and hydrologic models, whether they are industry standard software packages or custom-built research tools. By providing a common transfer format for common model inputs and outputs, RiverML can shorten the development time and enhance the immediate utility of innovative river modeling tools. RiverML will provide descriptions of cross sections and multiple flow lines, allowing the construction of wireframe representations. In addition, RiverML will support descriptions of network connectivity, properties such as roughness coefficients, and time series observations such as water surface elevation and flow rate. The language is constructed in a modular fashion such that the geometry information, network information, and time series observations can be communicated independently of each other, allowing an arbitrary suite of software packages to contribute to a coherently modeled scenario. Funding for the development of RiverML is provided through an NSF grant to CUAHSI HydroShare project, a web-based collaborative environment for sharing data & models. While RiverML is geared toward the transfer of data, HydroShare will serve as a repository for storing water-related data and models of any format, while providing enhanced functionality for standardized formats such as RiverML, WaterML, and shapefiles. RiverML is a joint effort between the CUAHSI HydroShare development team, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Hydrology Domain Working Group, and an international community of data providers, data users, and software developers.