OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group or How Too Many Dave’s is Never Enough Ilya Zaslavsky, David Lemon, Ulrich Looser

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically What is it? A joint working group of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) constituted as an OGC Domain Working Group. Brings together interested parties to develop and promote the technology for greatly improving the way in which water information is described and shared. Co-chaired by representatives nominated by the OGC TC and the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) Commission for Hydrology (CHy). Current Co-Chairs: Ilya Zaslavsky (SDSC), Ulrich Looser (GRDC) and David Lemon (CSIRO),

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically Purpose To provide a venue and mechanism for seeking technical and institutional solutions to the challenge of describing and exchanging data describing the state and location of water resources, both above and below the ground surface. The path to adoption will be through OGC papers and standards, advanced to ISO where appropriate, and also through the WMO’s Chy and WIS activities. The Hydrology DWG will provide a means of developing candidate standards for adoption by CHy as appropriate.

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically Rainfall Water quantity Groundwater Water Observations Data Meteorology Soil water Water quality 4

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically Sources of Observations Data

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically History March 2007 –CUAHSI submit WaterML as OGC Discussion paper Sept 2007 –Meeting of a group calling itself IWDIF (International Water Data Interoperability Forum) held in Canberra –Over 3 days discussed need to international water data standards –WMO (Chy) represented by Aus BOM –Report (Cox and Brodaric 2007)

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically CUAHSI Water Data Services 43 services 15,000 variables 1.8 million sites 9 million series 4.3 billion data 7

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically History Early 2008 –Much discussion between CSIRO, CUAHSI and OGC –Leads to meeting with WMO Chy President in July in Canberra September 2008 –First ad-hoc held in Atlanta –Presentations from CUAHSI and CSIRO –Discussion about value of group –Agreed to develop charter. December 2008 –Second ad-hoc in Valencia –TC requires changes to charter

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically History March 2009 –Third ad-hoc in Athens –Many presentations –TC agrees to charter – the DWG is formed June 2009 –First official meeting in Boston –Ilya elected OGC co-chair –Groundwater IE proposed (USGS, CanadianGS, CSIRO, CUAHSI + partners) July 2009 –David and Ulrich nominated by WMO –This requires amendment to charter

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically History September 2009 –Meeting in Darmstadt –Changes to charter agreed – Ulrich and David confirmed –Presentation of Water Data Exchange Formats Harmonisation Report by CSIRO/CUAHSI Continuously updated Includes efforts from many countries December 2009 –Meeting in Mountain View (California) –Update on Groundwater IE –Surface Water IE proposed (Peter Fitch from CSIRO organizing)

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically First workshop of the OGC/WMO Hydro DWG to be held in Ispra, Italy, March 2010 –26 participants confirmed: European JRC; OGC, US Geological Survey, Geological Survey of Canada, CSIRO (Australia), Bureau of Meteorology (Australia), CUAHSI (USA), Federal Institute of Hydrology (Germany), 52North, Kisters, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UK), International Office for Water (France), Deltares USA, disy Informationssysteme Gmbh (Germany), BRGM (France), ESRI, Swedish Univ of Agricultural Sciences, IDSIA (Switzerland), Global Runoff Data Centre (Germany), UNESCO-IHE (Netherlands) –Focus on: WaterML 2.0 Groundwater IE Surface Water IE Model Integration Information Model for Water

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically © 2009 Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. 13 Expected HDWG Outcomes The main expected outcome is a common model for exchanging hydrologic data, which includes: –An agreed feature model (ie. what are the features of the hydrosphere (from an information perspective) and how are they related.) –An agreed observation model. –Agreed vocabularies, endorsed by the community, and by WMO in particular. Agreeing on semantics is a long process, but we should be able to recommend some vocabularies –Also: services carrying the above === analysis and understanding requirements and use cases for hydrologic data integration; establishment of a community consensus-building process to support adoption and proliferation of the standards Very tentative work plan (to be updated at Ispra) – is at

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically HDWG Activities Analysis and harmonization of existing commonly used protocols and standards in the domain Interoperability Experiments (IEs) focused on selected sub-domains of water data (e.g. surface water, groundwater, water quality, water use, hydrologic forecasts, real time data), where teams of DWG members will pilot emerging water data standards and services, specifically addressing the three components above. Participation in GEO Architecture Implementation Pilots (AIPs), focused on broader scenarios within the entire domain and across domains Submission of discussion papers and best practice papers (the latter following IE and AIP experiences) Collaboration with other DWGs, in particular ESS (on modeling), MetOcean (on handling gridded data, forecasts), SWE (on real time data management) © 2009 Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. 14

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically © 2009 Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. 15 Sub-groups and IEs Sub-groups: –Design group: primarily responsible for driving WaterML 2.0 –Use case and testbed groups: IEs –Ontology/vocabulary task force IEs: so far, we’ve talked about 3 IEs: groundwater, surface water, water quality (but also: water use? Forecasts?...) –We expect that each IE will be about a year long. We hope that IE teams will work in collaboration, to ensure that a common model is developed, or that there are justified reasons to diverge.. –Another organizational option is to have a single large IE, covering all the sub-domains –Each IE is expected to address feature model in its sub-domain (sampling features, features of interest, cluster/aggregate features), the observation model (frequencies, sampling patterns, etc.), vocabularies, and services.

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically First demo of Hydrology IE-1 © 2009 Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. 16

Helping the World to Communicate Geographically Why too many Dave’s Many people involved, including: –David Maidment (CUAHSI) –David Valentine (CUAHSI) –David Tarboton (CUAHSI) –David Kinny (BOM) –David Schell (OGC) –David Arctur (OGC) –David Thomas (WMO) –David Lemon (CSIRO)