Last Week to Register Online for the 2013 CUAHSI Conference on Hydroinformatics and Modeling!

Online registration closes for the 2013 CUAHSI Conference on Hydroinformatics and Modeling this Sunday, June 30. If you have not done so, and are planning to attend, register today!

The conference will be held at Utah State University in Logan, Utah from July 17-19.

Confirmed Keynote and Invited Speakers Include:

• Dr. Alva Couch, Interim Director of the CUAHSI Water Data Center (Opening Keynote)
• Dr. Stan Ahalt, Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) - PI of the Water Science Software Institute Conceptualization Project (Keynote)
• Dr. Anthony Aufdenkampe, Stroud Water Research Institute and Principal Investigator on the CZO Data Project
• Dr. Amarnath Gupta, San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) - Semantics & Ontology, Examples from neuroscience
• Dr. Praveen Kumar, University of Illinois, Urbana - SEAD Project
• Dr. David Maidment, University of Texas at Austin - Leader of the CUAHSI HIS Project, 2008-2012 (Closing Keynote)
• Dr. Emilio Mayorga, University of Washington - Addressing the intersection of biogeochemistry and (geo)informatics (Keynote)
• Dr. Ramakrishna Nemani, NASA - NASA Earth Exchange (NEX)
• Dr. Silvano Pecora, Italy Institute for Environmental Protection & Research - Discussing deployment of HIS technology in Italy
• Dr. Jordan Read, US Geological Survey - USGS partnerships and innovations in modern hydroinformatics
• Dr. David Tarboton, Utah State University, Extending HIS through the new HydroShare Project
• Dr. Shaowen Wang, University of Illinois, Creator of CyberGIS

In addition to the very accomplished presenters listed above, there will additional presenters, research posters, and a number of HIS related workshops. I will be leading:

• HydroDesktop 1
• HydroDesktop 2 
• Publishing Data with the WDC

Dr. Daniel Ames, who is the lead developer of HydroDesktop, will also be leading a workshop on writing plugin tools for HydroDesktop.

Questions? Email me (jpollak@cuahsi.org) or CUAHSI's Communications and Outreach Specialist, Kayla Berry (kberry@cuahsi.org).

Hope to see you there! 

A One Stop Shop for Water Data

The CUAHSI HIS is a unique sources for water data because it enables access to multiple data sources seamlessly through one portal. While many government agencies such as the USGS and EPA make water data available, prior to the development of HIS, these data were only available independent of one another and most often in different formats. The technology developed and implemented in the HIS enables a user to search across such independent government agency data sources, in addition to data sources from academic research community, at the same time.

Image Credit: Michael Piasecki

Since 2008, the number of data sources available to the public in the HIS has consistently grown. In 2008, there were only 28 sources of water data available in HIS. Today, there are 100 sources of data registered in HIS that are available publicly!

What are those data sources, you say? As you might imagine, they vary in scale, scope, and organization type (among other things!). Some examples of data sources are the aforementioned government agencies (USGS NWIS; EPA STORET),  non-profit citizen led groups like the Ipswich River Watershed Association, and academic researchers such as those involved in the Shale Network.

To find out exactly what sources are providing data, you can visit the HIS Central website. Here you can find metadata about each and every source of data available in HIS such as a description, contact information for the publishing organization  statistics, geographic coverage, and suggested citation for the data. Below you can see a screenshot of the page for the Ipswich River Watershed Association's RiverWatch program.

How Can I Find and Download Water Data?

The CUAHSI community has developed tools to discover and access data registered in the CUAHSI HIS Central Catalog. The two most commonly used clients are HydroDesktop and HydroExcel.

HydroDesktop is an open-source, GIS enabled, desktop application. It provides several capabilities including data query, map-based visualization, data download, graphing, and data export. The primary purpose for HydroDesktop is discovering and retrieving observational data from the HIS system and it is designed to be useful for a number of different groups of users with a wide variety of needs and skill levels including: university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, K-12 students, engineering and scientific consultants, and others. HydroDesktop is an open source project; if you are interested in development of the software, visit the HydroDesktop Codeplex page!

HydroExcel is a macro-enabled Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet uses VBA macros and an object library called HydroObjects to communicate with and retrieve data from WaterOneFlow web services inside of Excel.

If you are a developer, be advised: You too can develop your own client that accesses data in the CUAHSI HIS as long as such a client can communicate with WaterOneFlow services!

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System

The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) is an internet-based system for sharing hydrologic time series data. It is comprised of databases and servers, connected through web services, to client applications, allowing for the publication, discovery and access of water data.

There are three types of computers that store and process data in the CUAHSI HIS:

HIS Central: This is the Central Catalog. It contains copies of metadata which facilitates searches. It operates similarly to a search engine, in that it harvests metadata from the data servers and allows it to be efficiently searched by the clients.

HydroServer: stores, organizes and publishes data; allows metadata to be harvested by HIS Central and data to be shared with clients.

Client: Software that gives users a convenient interface to access data. The first major role of the software clients is to enable data discovery by exposing metadata. For users wanting to find data, this is important as it allows a user to understand the data, and its source, before actually downloading the data. The second important role of the clients is to enable actual data download from HydroServers.
Different clients have different capabilities for analyzing data. For example, HydroDesktop is a GIS-enabled application with extensions that enable statistical analysis and modeling. HydroExcel is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with built in VBA macros that can access data registered with HIS Central, but has only minimal analysis tools such as creating a graph of data downloaded.

These three points of the HIS Triangle are tied together by web services, which are applications that facilitate the exchange of information over the internet. More on these soon.

For more information, visit the HIS website!