Abstract
Web based applications, web services, and online data and model sharing technology are becoming increasingly available to support hydrologic research. This promises benefits in terms of collaboration, computer platform independence, and reproducibility of modeling workflows and results. In this research, we designed an approach that integrates hydrologic modeling web services with an online data sharing system to support web-based simulation for hydrologic models. We used this approach to integrate example systems as a case study to support reproducible snowmelt modeling for a test watershed in the Colorado River Basin, USA. We demonstrated that this approach enabled users to work within an online environment to create, describe, share, discover, repeat, modify, and analyze the modeling work. This approach encourages collaboration and improves research reproducibility. It can also be adopted or adapted to integrate other hydrologic modeling web services with data sharing systems for different hydrologic models.
Highlights
Hydrologic modeling is essential as a guide to formulating strategies for water resources management or as a tool of scientific inquiry (Dingman, 2008)
The Utah Energy Balance (UEB) web app was developed as a Tethys web app and hosted in the HydroShare Tethys Apps portal to provide a graphical user interface for the HydroDS web services
We presented an approach that uses a three-layer RESTful web service based architecture to integrate open source software to enable web-based simulation to support hydrologic modeling research
Summary
Hydrologic modeling is essential as a guide to formulating strategies for water resources management or as a tool of scientific inquiry (Dingman, 2008). Hydrologic modeling research presents a number of challenges. Modelers need to discover and collect data from various sources (Archfield et al, 2015) and use it to prepare model inputs. Model input preparation can be time consuming and may require a substantial learning curve, especially where programming is needed (Miles, 2014). Modelers may need to access high performance computing (HPC) resources to effectively handle large scale or complicated hydrologic model simulations (Kumar et al, 2008; Laloy and Vrugt, 2012). Computer systems as infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure) that enable collaboration have the potential to significantly advance environmental modeling research
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
