Progress on water data integration and distribution: a summary of select US Geological Survey data systems

Abstract

Critical water-resources issues ranging from flood response to water scarcity make access to integrated water information, services, tools, and models essential. Since 1995 when the first water data web pages went online, the US Geological Survey has been at the forefront of water data distribution and integration. Today, real-time and historical streamflow observations are available via web pages and a variety of web service interfaces. The Survey has built partnerships with Federal and State agencies to integrate hydrologic data providing continuous observations of surface and groundwater, temporally discrete water-quality data, groundwater well logs, aquatic biology data, water availability and use information, and tools to help characterize the landscape for modeling. In this paper, we summarize the status and design patterns implemented for selected data systems. We describe how these systems contribute to a US Federal Open Water Data Initiative and present some gaps and lessons learned that apply to global hydroinformatics data infrastructure.