The importance of shared concepts: hydro-informatics standards promote Interoperability and integration in development of a versatile water-resources modeling system

Abstract:

Community model interface specifications such as the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) Basic Model Interface and the CSDMS Standard Names provide important building blocks for community model development, implementation, and application. In surface hydrology, shared concepts of models representing accumulation of streamflow in cascading systems of catchments and waterbodies, and other system-level entities and phenomena are critical to enable interoperability and integration. For instance, what is a water budget control volume to a water resources engineer is a catchment polygon with landscape characteristics to a geospatial data scientist and is a software module or object with classes and methods to a software developer. All members of the system, from web developers and water resources engineers, to water policy planners, have different ways of seeing entities that are conceptually identical. Developing a shared conceptual basis promotes usability across diverse application-domains so that the features, processes, and applications from surface hydrology can integrate with other concepts and models such as land surface models or groundwater models in a conceptually consistent way. The Open Geospatial Consortium “HY_Features” conceptual data model was designed to achieve these goals. Its utility is being explored in the Next Generation Water Modeling Framework (NGEN). NGEN is a National Weather Service-led collaboration to define, design, and develop a framework that will support research and operations from catchment and regional to continental scale.

This presentation will cover the role of a conceptual model as a critical element of the strategy for this community hydrologic modeling framework as well as lessons learned and a view for future challenges and opportunities with its use.