RHEAS Viewer: A tool for analysis and dissemination of hydrological and crop modeling data

The Regional Hydrologic Extremes and Assessment System (RHEAS) Viewer is a tool for the geospatial community that provides quick and easy visualization, sharing and analysis of hydrological and crop modeling data. The RHEAS modeling and assimilation framework couples a hydrological and crop modeling system. The RHEAS Viewer is a free and open-source online application that has been developed to interact with the RHEAS outputs for analysis and dissemination. RHEAS Viewer was developed for Eastern and Southern Africa and is used by multiple government organizations for drought and crop yield analysis. The web application uses outputs from two models namely Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) and Decision Support system for Agro-Technology Transfer (DSSAT) from the RHEAS framework. VIC is a gridded hydrological model that is used to display the results through daily maps of the selected variable. DSSAT is the crop modeling component, whose outcomes such as the yield trends and vegetation conditions based on seasons are displayed through the app. The application also helps in the visualization of end of season forecasts along with long term average values. The tool allows for the simultaneous selection of variables from both models for broader understanding and analysis of results through maps and charts. The application is completely modular in approach, where users can efficiently modify the code (available on GitHub) to point to their data products. Users will have to add the details of the backend that could be in any format such as netCDF, HDF, TIFF, ASCII or PostgreSQL database.