Unifying Water Data Sources: How the CUAHSI Water Data Center is Enabling and Improving Access to a Growing Catalog of over 100 Data Providers
Abstract
Scientific data about water are collected and distributed by numerous sources which can differ tremendously in scale. As competition for water resources increases, increasing access to and understanding of information about water will be critical. The mission of the new CUAHSI Water Data Center (WDC) is to provide those researchers who collect data a medium to publish their datasets and give those wanting to discover data the proper tools to efficiently find the data that they seek. These tools include standards-based data publication, data discovery tools based upon faceted and telescoping search, and a data analysis tool HydroDesktop that downloads and unifies data in standardized formats. The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) is a community developed and open source system for sharing water data. As a federated, web service oriented system it enables data publication for a diverse user population including scientific investigators (Research Coordination Networks, Critical Zone Observatories), government agencies (USGS, NASA, EPA), and citizen scientists (watershed associations). HydroDesktop is an end user application for data consumption in this system that the WDC supports. This application can be used for finding, downloading, and analyzing data from the HIS. It provides a GIS interface that allows users to incorporate spatial data that are not accessible via HIS, simple analysis tools to facilitate graphing and visualization, tools to export data to common file types, and provides an extensible architecture that developers can build upon. HydroDesktop, however, is just one example of a data access client for HIS. The web service oriented architecture enables data access by an unlimited number of clients provided they can consume the web services used in HIS. One such example developed at the WDC is the 'Faceted Search Client', which capitalizes upon exploratory search concepts to improve accuracy and precision during search. We highlight such features of the CUAHSI-HIS which make it particularly appropriate for providing unified access to several sources of water data. A growing community of researchers and educators are employing these tools for education; including sharing best practices around creating modules, supporting researchers and educators in accessing the services, and cataloging and sharing modules. The CUAHSI WDC is a community governed organization. Our agenda is driven by the community's voice through a Board of Directors and committees that decide strategic direction (new products), tactical decisions (product improvement), and evaluation of usability. By providing the aforementioned services within a community driven framework, we believe the WDC is providing critical services that include improving water data discoverability, accessibility and usability within a sustainable governance structure.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMPA31A1813P
- Keywords:
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- 1916 INFORMATICS Data and information discovery;
- 1800 HYDROLOGY;
- 1908 INFORMATICS Cyberinfrastructure