HydroShare: A Platform for Open Water Data

Presentation at AWRA National Conference in Salt Lake City. November 4, 2019.

HydroShare (www.hydroshare.org) is a hydrology-domain specific data and model repository operated by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc. (CUAHSI). HydroShare’s goal is to advance hydrologic science by enabling researchers to more easily share data, model and workflow products resulting from their research, creating and supporting reproducibility of the results reported in scientific publications. It supports the growing call for open data that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). HydroShare is comprised of two sets of functionality: (1) a repository for users to share and publish data and models, collectively referred to as resources, in a variety of formats, and (2) web application tools that can act on content in HydroShare for computational and visual analysis. Together these serve as a platform for collaboration and gateway for computation that integrates data storage, organization, discovery, and analysis and that allows researchers to employ services beyond their desktop computers to make data storage and manipulation more reliable and scalable, while improving their ability to collaborate and reproduce results. This presentation will describe ongoing enhancements to HydroShare and some of the challenges being faced in its design and ongoing development. We report on efforts to refine the way data and model content are formatted and stored within the system to better support storage, management, and sharing of the diverse data involved with hydrologic data and model studies. We have developed techniques that enable scientists to organize and package data and models within a single shareable unit, while still providing value-added tools for known data types. Additionally, access to reproducible and easy to use computational functionality is being advanced using JupyterHub as a gateway to computing resources. This collaborative and computational functionality provides an important incentive by providing users with immediate value, while meeting open data mandates and sharing data using open standards.

本报告为2019年11月4日于美国盐湖城举办的美国水资源协会（AWRA）全国会议上的展示演讲。HydroShare（www.hydroshare.org）是由水文科学促进大学联盟（Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc., CUAHSI）运营的水文领域专用数据与模型仓储平台。其核心目标是推动水文科学发展，助力研究人员更便捷地共享其研究产出的数据、模型及工作流成果，并支持科学出版物中报道结果的可重复性构建与维护。该平台响应了日益增长的开放数据呼吁，遵循可发现、可访问、可互操作、可复用（FAIR）原则。HydroShare包含两大功能模块：其一，为用户提供支持多格式存储的资源共享与发布仓储功能，此处的资源泛指各类数据与模型；其二，提供可对HydroShare内的内容进行计算与可视化分析的Web应用工具。二者共同构成了协作平台与计算网关，集成了数据存储、组织、发现与分析功能，使研究人员能够借助桌面计算环境之外的服务，提升数据存储与处理的可靠性与可扩展性，同时强化协作能力与结果可重复性。本次演讲将介绍HydroShare的持续优化进展，以及其在设计与迭代开发过程中面临的部分挑战。我们详述了针对系统内数据与模型内容的格式化与存储方式的改进工作，以更好地支持水文数据与模型研究中涉及的各类异构数据的存储、管理与共享。我们已开发出相关技术，可帮助科研人员在单一可共享单元内组织与打包数据及模型，同时针对已知数据类型提供增值工具。此外，团队正以JupyterHub作为计算资源网关，优化可复现且易用的计算功能的可及性。这种兼具协作与计算能力的功能，可为用户提供即时价值，同时满足开放数据合规要求，并通过开放标准实现数据共享，从而形成重要的应用激励。