Hydrologic Information System

The goals of the CUAHSI HIS are to unite the nation's water information, to make it universally accessible and useful, and to provide access to the data sources, tools and models that enable the synthesis, visualization and evaluation of the behavior of hydrologic systems. The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System is a geographically distributed network of hydrologic data sources and functions that are integrated using web services so that they function as a connected whole.

The HIS project is lead by Principal Investigator, David Maidment (maidment@mail.utexas.edu) at the University of Texas at Austin. San Diego Super Computer Center is the Technology Partner. Ilya Zaslavsky (zaslavsk@sdsc.edu) leads the SDSC development team.

Environmental data is collected by numerous federal, state, and local agencies as well as by academic scientists. Although the internet has improved access to these disparate data sources, gathering the data required for most hydrologic studies requires visiting multiple sites, each with its own access protocols and data exporting formats. Similarly, the internet provides a means for individual scientists to publish their data (as increasingly required by funding agencies), yet many scientists do not have the expertise to provide sophisticated interactive data retrieval sites.

To address these problems, the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System will provide the following services:

• Data discovery — A map-based viewer will display the locations where data collected by various entities in one location, including both government-collected and university-collected data.
• Data delivery — Through the use of programmatic calls, users will be able to retrieve data directly into databases, spreadsheets, and analysis packages using a single syntax regardless of data source.
• Data publication — Academic scientists will be able to easily publish data they collected so that appears within the common data viewer and responds to the same data retrieval calls as government sources.
• Data curation — A HIS Data Center (HISDAC), will provide a repository for archival data. These data can be viewed and delivered using the same mechanisms as described above so that their delivery is seamless to the user.