Near real-time water quantity monitoring data assets collected, managed, analyzed and disseminated by the MNRF and MOECC

Abstract

Based within the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF), the Surface Water Monitoring Centre (SWMC) is the primary Ontario government office tasked with Emergency Management responsibilities for flood forecasting and drought monitoring. To fulfil these mandates, the SWMC polls and ingests water monitoring data in near real-time, from approximately 2000 monitoring sites from 11 different sensor networks spanning the province, and adjacent jurisdictions. Central to the SWMC's operational near real-time data stream are 600 strategically located hydrometric stream gauge sites that are cost-shared with Environment Canada -Water Survey of Canada (EC-WSC). The SWMC ingests data from an additional 1400 monitoring stations through an array of partnerships with agencies such as the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), Parks Canada (PC), all 36 Conservation Authorities (CA), the International Joint Commission (IJC), NOAA, Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) and a Citizen Weather Science initiative called CoCoRaHS. Along with hydrometric level and flow data, the SWMC captures, archives and disseminates precipitation, wind, temperature (water and air), air pressure, wave buoy, soil moisture, snow-depth and snow water equivalent data from across Ontario. Beginning in 2014 the SWMC, in cooperation with the MOECC began ingesting groundwater level data from 100 MOECC Provincial Groundwater Monitoring Network (PGMN) wells in near real-time via GOES satellite telemetry. As well beginning in 2015, the MOECC has initiated the migration of the Provincial Groundwater Monitoring Information System (PGMIS) period-of-record into what is becoming a shared MNRF/MOECC water quantity monitoring data environment. To accommodate this large and ever increasing near real-time data stream and the entire period-of-record associated with each gauge/site (in some cases >100 years), this shared data environment requires robust IT infrastructure and software. Further, because the SWMC provides critical Emergency Management services, we are obligated to operate 24/7 in a restrictive and secure IT environment with numerous hardware and software redundancies. In common with the majority of Ontario's 36 Conservation Authorities (our central local flood forecasting, drought monitoring and groundwater monitoring partners in Ontario) our primary water monitoring data management software solution is a KISTERS product, WISKI (Water Information Systems KISTERS). This presentation will highlight the MNRF/MOECC's near real-time water quantity monitoring data assets, data flows, polling and telemetry systems/ability, core IT KISTERS data management infrastructure, spatial/temporal (ESRI/Kisters) integration, integrated data linkages to operational models/reports/maps, automated alarm systems, the various sensor networks utilized, the network partnerships that have developed , current web-based near-real-time data reporting services (WISKI WebPro) and the array of flood forecasting and drought monitoring products and services provided to Conservation Authorities and Ontario based water resource partner agencies. Lastly we are currently halfway through a major KISTERS version upgrade (WISKI 7). With this latest version we will have the ability to both consume and publish real-time hydrological data over the Internet using OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards like WaterML2.0. This development, consistent with the Ontario Government's commitment to Open Data, will allow us to expose our entire data stream and period-of-record archive globally via a simple web browser.