An early demonstration of Geoconnex in action, connecting water data to the rivers that carry it.

Built by the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute at Duke University, River Runner: Linked was one of the first tools to show how Geoconnex could transform water data discovery. Expanding on Sam Learner’s original River Runner, which lets users trace any river system in the U.S. downstream, this version adds data context, displaying clickable points for USGS monitoring sites, diversions, and water quality data along each river. These connections are made possible by Geoconnex, which spatially links datasets to real-world hydrologic features and organizes them through the USGS Network-Linked Data Index.