Application of an international standard for hydrologic features toward more open hydrologic science data.

Application of an international standard for hydrologic features toward more open hydrologic science data.

The idea of open science includes transparency and openness of scientific data, methods, and discourse. As hydrologic science becomes increasingly data intensive, computational, and increasingly at large landscape scales, the challenges for openness of scientific data increase in several ways. This talk will describe recent advances toward standard information models that aim to provide shared concepts and terminology for hydrologic information.

Hydrologic data are typically collected to describe some aspect of a waterbody or catchment. Hydrographic data, a type of hydrologic data, are the spatial description of these waterbody and catchment features. The new community standard, WaterML2 Part 3: Surface Hydrology Features (HY_Features), seeks to provide a conceptual model and common terminology for the hydrologic features that are the focus of hydrologic science.

The HY_Features standard can play a role in all aspects of open hydrologic science:
1) It can be used as a documentation language for data.
2) it can be used to describe the kinds of and relationships between hydrologic features associated with a scientific method or software.
3) it can provide a lingua franca for description of features that are the subject of hydrologic science.

HY_Features, published in early 2018, includes an informative description of the conceptual model, a set of normative statements (rules) that describe how to conform to the standard, and a data model described using Unified Modeling Language classes and diagrams. The standard does not include a specific data encoding. It is expected that encodings will be established as needed by organizations and/or the hydrologic science community.

Among the many potential applications of the HY_Features conceptual model, linking disparate information about and among hydrologic features on the internet has great potential for enhancing open science. This talk will present the findings of an international collaboration toward this goal called the Environmental Linked Features Interoperability Experiment (ELFIE). HY_Features concepts will be presented using applications implemented for the ELFIE as case studies to illustrate how HY_Features and the technology implemented in the ELFIE will enhance open and transparent hydrologic science.