Abstract
Due to the complexity and heterogeneity inherent to the hydrologic cycle, the modeling of physical water processes has historically and inevitably been characterized by a broad spectrum of disciplines including data management, visualization, and statistical analyses. This is further complicated by the sub-disciplines within the water science community, where specific aspects of water processes are modeled independently with simplification and model boundary integration receiving little attention. This can hinder current and future research efforts to understand, explore, and advance water science. We developed the Virtual Watershed Platform to improve understanding of hydrologic processes and more generally streamline model-data integration and data integration with tools for data visualization, analysis, and management. Currently, four models have been developed as components and integrated into the overall platform, demonstrating data prepossessing (e.g. sub gridding), data interaction, model execution, and visualization capabilities. The developed data management technologies provide a suite of capabilities, enabling diverse computation capabilities, data storage capacity, connectivity, and accessibility. The developed Virtual Watershed Platform explored the use of virtual reality and 3d visualization for scientific experimentation and learning, provided web services for the transfer of data between models and centralized data storage, enabled the statistical distribution of hydrometeorological model input, and coupled models using multiple methods, both to each other and to a distributed data management and visualization system.
Highlights
Mechanisms responsible for observed and projected hydrologic change in high-elevation catchments are poorly understood, especially with respect to snow pack dynamics, surfacewater/groundwater linkages, and interactions with vegetation
The envisioned development of a Virtual Watershed Platform in which diverse tools can be integrated using standard web service models was intended as a complement to existing model integration systems, such as OpenMI (Moore and Tindall, 2005), and CSDMS (Peckham et al, 2013), and as a more generalized data management system than the version of CUAHSI’s HydroServer [based upon the CUAHSI HIS architectural model (Horsburgh et al, 2009)] that was available at the time
The developed architectural approach is aligned with the component-based strategies described by Peckham et al (2013) and Buahin and Horsburgh (2018) but extends those approaches to enable support for general purpose and standards-based data visualization and analysis systems that leverage data and visualization services published by the data management platform
Summary
Mechanisms responsible for observed and projected hydrologic change in high-elevation catchments are poorly understood, especially with respect to snow pack dynamics, surfacewater/groundwater linkages, and interactions with vegetation. The envisioned development of a Virtual Watershed Platform in which diverse tools can be integrated using standard web service models was intended as a complement to existing model integration systems, such as OpenMI (Moore and Tindall, 2005), and CSDMS (Peckham et al, 2013), and as a more generalized data management system than the version of CUAHSI’s HydroServer [based upon the CUAHSI HIS architectural model (Horsburgh et al, 2009)] that was available at the time. The developed architectural approach is aligned with the component-based strategies described by Peckham et al (2013) and Buahin and Horsburgh (2018) but extends those approaches to enable support for general purpose and standards-based data visualization and analysis systems that leverage data and visualization services published by the data management platform
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