National Water Availability Assessment: Communicating the Science with Data Science and Visualizations
November 19, 2025 / 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET
Venue/Location: Virtual
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Speakers
- Althea A. Archer
- Science Communicator, USGS
- Anthony Martinez
- Data Scientist, USGS
The National Water Availability Assessment was a large-scale effort that relied on multiple teams of scientists from various hydrologic disciplines, employing differing modeling, programming, and visualization approaches. Bringing consistency across the body of work through the process of co-design provided a unified product and a heightened sense of credibility and authority. Our main roles on the Assessment were to help coordinate (1) the data analysis pipelines for the Assessment report and (2) the data visualizations for the report and the Vizlab website. We employed reproducible approaches to data analysis, cohesive design principles, and FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) data principles to bring this body of work together. We present this coordination process, our approach, and aspects of our process to provide lessons learned for others undertaking similar interdisciplinary, large-scale projects.