Across the Western US, regional water use analysis and planning are increasingly important due to unprecedented drought and high demand growth. However, reconciling differing data access protocols, structures, and terminologies across states makes accessing water data cumbersome. WestDAAT provides user-friendly access to data in a machine-readable format for over 1.7 million active water rights.
The Western States Water Council (WSWC) has completed the development of the first stage of the Western States Water Data Access and Analysis Tool (WestDAAT). WestDAAT will improve data visualization and streamline water data sharing for eighteen states in the western US. The new tool is the latest phase of the WSWC’s Water Data Exchange (WaDE) program, launched in 2011. WestDAAT encourages data sharing through a common system that improves access to and analysis of public water rights and water use data by providing this data in standardized, machine-readable formats. For the first time, WestDAAT provides access to information about surface water and groundwater prior-appropriation rights, serving approximately 2.5 million users.
HydroShare is a trusted open-source data repository for the water community. In this webinar, users will learn the ins and outs and best practices of storing, sharing, collaborating on, and publishing data in HydroShare. We will also cover how to use CUAHSI’s free apps like CUAHSI JupyterHub and MATLAB online in conjunction with HydroShare.
These webinar slides were presented during an IoW Webinar held on December 6, 2022, and provide a detailed overview and update for general audiences on the Internet of Water’s flagship technology, Geoconnex. When completed, this geospatial index will be capable of searching and retrieving any water metadata published in the United States, and ultimately North America and beyond. Geoconnex relies on a distributed linked data system. Such systems are foundational elements of modern internet search technology, allowing for the search and retrieval of millions of records in an instant. Such a linked data system does not yet exist for water data but has been an aspiration of the water data informatics community for some years, and the subject of significant research to date. This webinar will provide visualizations of Geoconnex (e.g., what does it do, how does it work), including visualizations of the current contents and anticipated growth in scope and scale of the index this year.
With the passage of the Disaster Recovery Reform Act in 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched a new program to provide a larger and more reliable funding stream for pre-disaster mitigation – the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (“BRIC”) Program. In this webinar, Scott Baldwin, Senior Mitigation Manager in Hagerty Consulting’s Recovery Division, discussed the structure of the BRIC program and how communities are beginning to use these funds to prepare for future natural disasters, including droughts.