HydroShare: A Platform for Collaborative Data and Model Sharing in Hydrology

Researchers across the country and around the world expend tremendous resources to gather and analyze vast stores of data and populate models to better understand the process they are studying. Each of those researchers has limited money, time, computational capacity, data storage, and ability to put that data to productive use. What if they could combine their efforts to make collaboration easier? What if those collected data sets and processed model outputs could be used collaboratively to help advance knowledge beyond their original purpose? It is these questions that are motivating the movement towards open data, better data management and collaboration and sharing in the use of data and models. In short, researchers are relying more on teamwork to tackle the big problems of the day. This presentation will describe the HydroShare web based hydrologic information system operated by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc. (CUAHSI) that is available for use as a service to the hydrology community. HydroShare includes a repository for users to share and publish data and models in a variety of formats, and to make this information available in a citable, shareable, and discoverable manner. HydroShare also includes tools (web apps) that can act on content in HydroShare, providing users with a gateway to high performance computing and computing in the cloud. HydroShare has components that support: (1) resource storage, (2) resource exploration, and (3) web apps for actions on resources. The HydroShare data discovery, sharing and publishing functions as well as HydroShare web apps provide the capability to analyze data and execute models completely in the cloud, overcoming desktop platform limitations. We will discuss how these developments can be used to support collaborative research and modeling in Hydrology, where being web based is of value as collaborators can all have access to the same functionality regardless of their computer. We will illustrate the use of HydroShare for collecting and making accessible to the community data from the US National Water Model and 2017 Atlantic Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria that had significant impacts on parts of the US and islands in the Caribbean. HydroShare is being used to assemble, document and archive hydrologic data from these events to support research to improve our understanding of and capability to prepare for and respond to such extreme events in the future.

Presentation at 2018 AWRA Spring Specialty Conference: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Water Resources X, Orlando, Florida, April 23-25, http://awra.org/meetings/Orlando2018/.

国内外的科研工作者投入巨大的资源，用以搜集、分析大量的数据，并构建模型以深化对所研究过程的理解。每位研究人员在资金、时间、计算能力、数据存储以及数据有效利用方面均存在限制。若他们能够联合力量，简化协作过程，将收集到的数据集和已处理模型输出用于合作，以超越其原始目的推动知识的进步，该会是何种情景？正是这些疑问推动了开放数据、数据管理优化、协作与数据及模型共享运动的发展。简而言之，研究人员正越来越依赖于团队合作来解决当代的宏大问题。本次演示将介绍由推进水文科学发展的大学联合会（Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc.，简称CUAHSI）运营的基于网络的HydroShare水文信息系统，该系统作为一项服务向水文社区开放。HydroShare包括一个用户可以共享和发布数据及模型的存储库，并以可引用、可分享和可发现的方式提供信息。HydroShare还包含能够对HydroShare中的内容进行操作的工具（Web应用），为用户提供通往高性能计算和云计算的入口。HydroShare包括支持（1）资源存储、（2）资源探索以及（3）在资源上执行操作的Web应用的组件。HydroShare的数据发现、共享和发布功能，以及HydroShare Web应用，提供了在云端完全分析数据和执行模型的能力，克服了桌面平台限制。我们将讨论这些发展如何支持水文领域的协作研究和建模，其中基于网络的特性具有重要价值，因为无论合作者的计算机如何，他们都能访问相同的功能。我们将展示如何使用HydroShare收集和使社区能够访问来自美国国家水文模型以及2017年对美国部分地区和加勒比海岛屿造成重大影响的哈维、艾尔玛和玛丽亚飓风的数据。HydroShare正在被用来汇编、记录和存档这些事件的水文数据，以支持研究，提高我们对未来极端事件的了解、准备和应对能力。

该演示于2018年AWRA春季专题会议：地理信息系统（GIS）与水资源X在佛罗里达州奥兰多举行，时间为4月23日至25日，详细信息请访问http://awra.org/meetings/Orlando2018/。