Type: Documents
Categories: Data Stories
The Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting (SSWSF) program’s data are widely used by agricultural communities, government agencies, private businesses, and recreationists to inform day-to day operations and broad decision-making. We compiled numerous case studies documenting the economic value of the SSWSF program to show the benefit-to-cost ratio for different users. We found that 38% of the time the benefits from a single case study exceeded annual program costs.
Type: Documents
Categories: Inventory
The IoW has begun to inventory public governments to identify (1) who is collecting water data, (2) the purpose of collection, (3) types of water data collected, and (4) how FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) the data are for secondary data users.
Type: Documents
Categories: Inventory
Description and flow chart of the data inventory process. From a general public, outsiders perspective we want to know:
• Who is collecting water data and for what purposes?
• What types of water data are collected?
• How discoverable, accessible, and usable are those data for secondary users?
Type: Presentations
Categories: Educational Materials
The objectives of this workshop are to provide participants with increased data literacy, increased understanding of cloud services, and increased understanding of and application of tools around the development of metadata related to water. This workshop will offer a short introduction to data sharing and cloud services, followed by an in-depth conversation and hands-on exercises on water-related metadata. This workshop is a partnership among the Internet of Water (IoW), Water Data Exchange (WaDE) of the Western Water States Council, and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI). The materials in this presentation focus on how data are made discoverable and accessible, with a particular focus on cloud services and catalogs.
Type: Presentations
Categories: Educational Materials
The objectives of this workshop are to provide participants with increased data literacy, increased understanding of cloud services, and increased understanding of and application of tools around the development of metadata related to water. This workshop will offer a short introduction to data sharing and cloud services, followed by an in-depth conversation and hands-on exercises on water-related metadata. This workshop is a partnership among the Internet of Water (IoW), Water Data Exchange (WaDE) of the Western Water States Council, and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI). The materials in this presentation focus on the what and why of data sharing.
Type: Presentations
Categories: Educational Materials
Skillful and adaptive management of water resources in the 21st century requires an advanced and open water data infrastructure. While water data have been collected by federal, state, and local agencies for decades, much of it is not open or following FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Currently, water data are collected by different agencies, for different purposes, at different scales, and are scattered across multiple platforms using different standards. This limits their ability to be integrated and put to additional use in a timely manner to answer even basic questions about our river basins and aquifers in a timely way, namely: how much water is there, what is its quality and how is it being used. A broad coordinating effort is needed to convene and consolidate this fragmented system to ensure that data can be discovered and shared across platforms to reduce uncertainties and costly inefficiencies in water decision-making as water resources become more constrained. The Internet of Water (IoW) is designed to provide coordination to the governance and technical standards needed for much of our water data to become FAIR. The IoW envisions a world engaged in sustainable water resource management enabled by open, shared, and integrated water data and information. The components of the IoW already exist (producers, hubs, and users), but the work of sharing and integrating data between them is not a primary mission for any of them. It is the mission of the IoW is to build a dynamic and voluntary network of communities and institutions to facilitate the opening, sharing, and integration of water data and information.
Type: Documents
Categories: IoW General Information
The Internet of Water report, published in 2017, provided a series of findings and recommendations from the Aspen Institute Dialogue Series on Sharing and Integrating Water Data for Sustainability to address how to improve our nation’s water data infrastructure to better equip and enable sustainable water resource management.
Since that report, the Nicholas Institute was tasked with beginning to implement an Internet of Water (IoW). As an initial step, the Aspen Institute convened a series of conversations across the United States to learn about current water data activities, discuss needs and expectations of different communities, identify and strengthen collaborations, and imagine how the IoW could be best implemented for their region or sector.
This addendum synthesizes the perspectives from each of the five regional roundtables which took place in California, the Great Lakes Region, the Midwest, Texas, and the Colorado River Basin. Notably, this addendum highlights the similarities and differences between regions – starting with the context for each roundtable and ending with an overall vision for building the Internet of Water. It was clear that sectors and regions are deeply interested in realizing the potential of their water data. Many were interested in the IoW providing a neutral convening and coordinating role to leverage ongoing activities and ensure the data infrastructure built will allow water data to flow seamlessly between sectors and regions.
Type: Documents
Categories: IoW General Information
Currently in the United States, we do not have the necessary data we need to manage our water supplies and to pursue innovative solutions to meet our water management challenges. Where data does exist, it is not in a format that is easily accessible or understandable and there are often strong disincentives, fears, and concerns about sharing it. To address this challenge, the Aspen Institute Energy and Environment Program in partnership with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and Redstone Strategy Group convened the Aspen Institute Dialogue Series on Water Data.
Between May 2016 and February 2017, the Dialogue Series hosted several roundtables with a select group of water experts, managers, policy makers, regulators, and representatives from the private and social sectors, to focus on how to create better water data infrastructure to access and connect publicly collected and reported sources for data, beginning with quantity, quality and use information.
The report highlights and provides a principle-based blueprint recommending a 3-step plan for how to design and launch a feasible and operable “Internet of Water” – a network of interconnected data producers, hubs, and users – that will enable connecting and transmitting water-related data and information in real-time. To sustainably manage any resource, there needs to be an accounting system comprised of accessible data of a known quality. Connecting water data from across the U.S. will than revolutionize how water resources are being managed; being better situated to address prevalent water problems such as extreme flooding, scarcity, contamination, and restoring aquatic systems.