Advancing Water Resources Research and Management

Abstract: Panel: USGS Water Resources on the WWW

Alan Lumb, Chief NWIS Program
David Briar, Hydrologist
Lorna A. Schmid, Hydrologist

In 1993 a USGS Water Resources computer specialist in Colorado established one of the first web servers on an infant World Wide Web and so began our involvement in this revolution. USGS Water Resources was poised to take advantage of the web because of our TCP/IP based, distributed data management system already in place (a rarity at the time). This system was established to provide local control of data processing and avoid slow connections to a centrally administered mainframe. State offices began deploying web servers and distributing water resources information. The water.usgs.gov web server in Headquarters was opened to tie these local sites together and serve national program information. Currently, USGS Water Resources information and data for every state is available on the WWW.

In 1995 a USGS software program rt_www was implemented to distribute real-time stream-flow data on the web and things were about to really change. People found uses for our data that we did not anticipate. Recreationists, including white water enthusiasts and fishermen, looking for optimal conditions, emergency personnel attempting rescue operations, and farmers using the data during spring melts to determine where along a property line a dike might need to be fixed, along with our traditional users, these were only some of the documented.

Real time data is only one element of the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS). NWIS is a system used for the storage and retrieval of water data collected through its activities at approximately 1.5 million sites. Available historical NWIS data is currently served from the water.usgs.gov web server and links are provided to the real-time stream-flow data served from local offices throughout the Nation and Puerto Rico. A 1998 news release titled "Wealth of USGS Water Information Now Available Online" contains some additional details.

Current software-development efforts are aimed at creating a web-accessible nationally-seamless view of all NWIS data capable of delivering different levels of quality-assured data to a range of different audiences, both internal and external to the USGS. Implementation will by necessity, be incremental. Design goals are to provide access to the raw data and to provide the internal data reviewer with configurable tools to facilitate data-quality assurance. Public users will be provided additional information and maps to make the data more comprehensible.

Another effort underway is the development of a fast, robust, fault-tolerant system to serve our data and information on the WWW. This data and information will be locally managed and accessible for internal users while being reflected onto a series of three mirrored web farms positioned at large-bandwidth Internet gateways for external access.

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