AWRA GIS & Water Resources VII Special Organized Sessions

The call to propose and organize special sessions for the 2012 AWRA GIS & Water Resources VII conference produced twelve sessions, ranging from some familiar topics to new developments and panel discussions. 

Session 1 Monday afternoon, 1:30 – 3:00 pm
Water Resources Information Technologies – Directions, Drivers, and Opportunities
Organized by:  Katherine Lins
Chief, Office of Water Information, WRD
U.S. Geological Survey

This is the opening session to the new Executive Track on Monday afternoon for the AWRA GIS & Water Resources 2012 conference.  The session will feature presentations by leaders in the geospatial fields geared towards putting new technologies, basic data applications and initiatives in perspective for decision makers.  Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion and open Q & A.

Session 5 Monday afternoon, 3:30 – 5:00 pm
World Water Online
Organized by:  David Maidment, University of Texas at Austin
Steve Kopp, ESRI
Fernando Salas, University of Texas at Austin

In leveraging new IT capabilities and ideas, hydrologic modeling and GIS are moving to Internet-hosted applications providing the opportunity to make water resources data and modeling more accessible not only to GIS and water professionals, but to professionals of other disciplines who need this information, as well as non-professionals.   We will discuss and demonstrate a system for connecting real-time and historic observations data to landscape descriptions that can be derived via simple-to-use, global, analytic web services. This system will provide a new level of integration between observations and modeling, accessible to both water resources professionals and the broader community.

Session 2 Monday afternoon, 1:30 – 3:00 pm 

Organized by:  Norm Jones
Brigham Young University

Arc Hydro Groundwater is a geodatabase design for representing groundwater datasets within ArcGIS. The data models helps archive, display, and analyze multidimensional groundwater data, and includes several components to represent different types of datasets including representations of aquifers and wells/boreholes, 3D hydrogeologic models, temporal information, and data from simulation models. The data model is compatible with the surface water data model and shares the same framework.

This special session brings together new developments including online well registration, server-based water rights analysis and building 3D geology models in ArcGIS.

Sessions 9 and 13 Tuesday morning, 8:30 – 10:00 am and 10:30 – 12:00

Organized by: Jeff Simley
National Hydrography Dataset, U.S. Geological Survey

The National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) has become an indispensible foundation to the study of water resources in geographic information systems.  Two special organized sessions bring together a series of presentations focusing on advancements ranging from referencing and stewardship to improving user resources.  Due to an unprecedented number of abstract submissions related to the NHD three additional NHD sessions were created:  Session 17, Updates to the NHD; Session 21, NHD Plus and Session 37, NHD 3: Watershed Boundary Dataset.

Sessions 10 and 14Tuesday morning, 8:30 – 10:00 am and 10:30 – 12:00

Organized by: David Tarboton, Utah State University
Daniel Ames, Idaho State University

These sessions are focused on integrated systems for spatiotemporal hydrologic data management, search, discovery, and use. The CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) is one of several national and global efforts to collate and catalog the hydrologic and climate data of the world in such a way that it is discoverable and accessible across a distributed network of common web-services based systems. These sessions presents work related to HIS and other efforts to make spatiotemporal hydrologic, climate, and water resources data available through web interfaces.

Session 11 Tuesday morning, 8:30 – 10:00 am

Organized by:  Scott Wilson, Chief, Spatial Analysis Branch and
NWRC Emergency Response Coordinator
USGS - National Wetlands Research Center

The Atchafalaya Basin is the largest freshwater swamp in the United States. This incredible ecosystem not only supports diverse wildlife like the Louisiana Black Bear, American Alligator, and migratory waterfowl, but is also one of the most culturally rich areas and is the heart of the unique Cajun culture found in Southern Louisiana.  Many generations of Cajuns have earned their living within the Basin, and thousands of others depend on its resources for recreation. The Atchafalaya Basin also plays a major role in navigation, oil and gas development, and flood control. 

Like most watersheds, it must be managed in a way that balances the diverse interests of the numerous stakeholders. The Atchafalaya Basin Program and other supporting Federal, State, and local agencies are working together to enhance water quality and water access and are working towards a goal of long-term sustainability.  GIS, modeling, remote sensing, and Internet-based decision support tools are used to better understand the system and to communicate complex situations to managers and the public.  Recently, project planners working within the Basin have started to leverage data, analysis products, and visualization tools in public meetings to help stakeholders better understand the complex dynamics of this natural system, thus gaining support for a path forward.  Sustainability of the most ecologically productive river basin in the United States depends on the development of integrated water resource management tools.  

Session 19 Tuesday afternoon, 1:30 – 3:00 pm

Organized by: Naomi Detenbeck
US EPA Atlantic Ecology Division

Traditionally, decision support tools and models and data access portals for geospatial and/or temporal data have been developed separately, requiring significant preparation time to acquire input data for those tools.  This session focuses on linkages between geospatial and temporal data access and decision support tools for coastal systems, both freshwater and marine.  Issues explored include water quality, water resource management, and hazard mitigation.  This session supplements material that will be explored in more depth in the pre-conference workshop on decision support tools.

Session 25 Wednesday morning, 8:30 – 10:00 am

Organized by: Stephen Bourne
Water Resources Technologies, Atkins

Sharing quantitative research beyond final results has traditionally been difficult.  By their nature, tools for numerical analysis and modeling require deep understanding of the underlying algorithm being implemented and deep familiarity with the quirks in the implementation brought about through either creator preference or technological limitations.   As a result, true understanding of the tools created to implement a particular algorithm often remains only within the mind of the creating scientist or engineer.   For this reason, thousands of spreadsheets, small code snippets, custom tools for conducting dissertation analysis, among many others, are orphaned, despite their considerable conceptual value and computational skill.

 As the computational age progresses, there has been significant use of data sharing, which has resulted in reduced research times, the ability to validate findings with multiple lines of evidence, and indeed the ability to work from the same common data source.   Moreover, as results of analyses make their way onto the web in the form of visualizations, maps, and charts, they are being used more and more in mash-ups; carefully collated exhibits that bring together results from many sources to make a larger point.

What’s the next step in sharing?  In the past, a common complaint of the users of research products is the dreaded black box; the idea that you only know what data is going into the analysis and what results are coming out, but you don’t really know in detail the transformations that are happening during the analysis.  Demands for higher transparency and reproducible research have edged us closer and closer to cracking open the black box in recent years.  The black box is next.

This session will focus on methods and technologies for analysis sharing and collaboration, investigating 1) schematically based tools like Esri’s model builder and schematic processor, the Stella systems analysis model, and several others, and 2) physically based tools that equate the underlying conceptual model of a tool to a well-known physical system such as a river or estuary or groundwater system, so that multiple users can share in the modeling experience though their common real world experience.   The session will conclude with an audience discussion on the value of sharing analyses and collaborating on analyses.

Session 29 Wednesday morning, 10:30 – 12:00

Organized by: Phil Guertin, Chair, Watershed Management and Ecohydrology Program, University of Arizona
Scott Miller, University of Wyoming

The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) tool is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) interface jointly developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service, the University of Arizona and the University of Wyoming to automate the parameterization and execution of the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and KINematic Runoff and EROSion (KINEROS2) hydrologic models. The application of these two models allows AGWA to conduct hydrologic modeling and watershed assessments at multiple temporal and spatial scales.  AGWA’s current outputs are runoff (volumes and peaks) and sediment yield, plus nitrogen and phosphorus with the SWAT model.

This special organized session features applications utilizing AGWA, ranging from rangeland hydrology to oil and gas development.

Session 33 Wednesday afternoon, 1:30 – 3:00 pm

Organized by: Tim Whiteaker
University of Texas at Austin

This session explores applications using schematic networks of nodes and links to represent features and the connectivity between them in GIS.  Tools such as the Schematic Processor for ArcGIS 10 enable behaviors to be associated with these features such that processes such as pollutant loading and transport can be simulated from directly within the GIS geoprocessing environment.  This session seeks paper presentations related to the Schematic Processor as well as other innovative applications of schematic networks in GIS.

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