Water Resources Web Apps Made Easier-ish: Introducing Tethys 2.0

From the dawn of the internet, water resources data scientists and engineers have continually and boldly engaged with the challenge of developing and deploying interactive water data visualization and analysis web sites. This challenge is characterized by ever-changing internet technologies, new and endlessly varying programming languages and libraries, rapidly growing datasets, and increasingly complex analytical and modeling techniques. Indeed, the ideal water web site is always just out of reach because of these always changing tools and growing needs. It is likely that such challenges will exist for many future generations of hydroinformaticists. However, we reason that it ought to be possible to at least reduce the gap between what we can readily accomplish with existing tools and technologies and what our ideal might be. Towards this end, the Tethys Platform for water resources web apps has been developed. This platform combines a number of key visualization and data management technologies within a Django-based Python programming environment that simplifies deploying GIS-enabled water resources web apps. The system provides developers and users with an app portal, not entirely unlike the app paradigm that is common on tablets and mobile phones, where each app is developed, tested, deployed, and operated independently of other apps in the same portal. The app development framework includes OpenLayers map visualization, 52North geoprocessing capabilities, PostgreSQL database access, and a number of so-called \"gizmos\" that simplify user interface development. This presentation will give an architectural overview of the free and open source Tethys Platform and will illustrate the capabilities of the framework using several apps developed using the recently released Tethys version 2.0.

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/