PDF《MEETINGS》

Eos, Vol.

87, No. 1,

3 January

2006 hypothesis testing. Education services are needed to advance the use of hydrologic information in the classroom. Using a scoring system where four points were assigned for first choice, three for sec? ond choice, two for third choice, and one for fourth choice, data services received 36.5% of the points, science services 24.8%, observatory services 23.8%, and education services 14.9%. The survey also presented an extensive list of data sets that the HIS could potentially include. From this list, 60% of survey responses identified the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow data as being essential to their research. Other high-scoring data sets included: the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) precipitation dataset, 35%;

the National Elevation Dataset, 32%;

and remote sensing data, 31%. Soils, climate, groundwater, land cover, and hydrography data were identified as essential by 20-30% of respondents. When asked to indicate one data set that would most benefit from increased ease of access through a HIS, 15% of respondents identified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency'

s STORET (Storage and Retrieval) water quality data, 13% identified USGS streamflow, 11% identified remote sensing data, and 10% identified Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) precipitation data. Figure

1 gives results from the responses to the question as to which data difficulties are most important to address. In these responses, inconsistent data formats and existence and consistency of metadata are the biggest concerns. Compatibility interoperability and reliance on open-source or professionally supported commercial systems are important factors in the design of an information system.The ques? tionnaire results show that many respondents use multiple operating systems. Although 96% of respondents use the Microsoft Windows operating systems for research, 36% of respon? dents use another operating system in addition to Windows. Respondents predominantly favor open-source HIS software but at the same time would like to leverage commercial software and have the capability to w o r k o n a ^ ° P e r a n n g sys? tems. The HIS should include the capability to interact with other software tools, but which ones? Survey responses show that in hydrologic research, FORTRAN is the most popular programming language, Microsoft Excel is most used for data management, and Matlab is most used for math? ematics and statistics work. Among Geographic Information Systems, most respondents (93%) used the Environmen? tal Systems Research Institute'

s ArcGIS system. Among hydrologic modeling systems, the MOD- FLOW program is widely used for groundwater modeling, but for surface water modeling there is no predominant model among the more than

25 hydrologic models mentioned in the survey and listed by respondents. Development of the CUAHSI HIS is ongoing, informed by the results of this survey. The significant time spent on data preparation indicates the need for hydrologic informa? tion cyberinfrastructure to ease this burden and help hydrologic scientists to effectively synthesize information from disparate sources. Reponses have indicated the need to focus primarily on basic data services followed by more sophisticated services in support of science and hydrologic observatories. It is important for data services to address critical data use difficulties such as inconsis? tent data formats, the existence and consis? tency of metadata, and irregular time steps. Given the diversity of models and software systems in use by hydrologic scientists, a general, simple, standard, and open interface that could connect with many systems appears to be the only way to accommodate all of the models used. For more information about CUAHSI visit the Web site www.cuahsi.org.The Hydrologic Information System User Needs Assessment is available at http://www.cuahsi.org/docs/ HISStatusSeptl5.pdf Acknowledgments We thank those who participated in the CUAHSI HIS survey for their time and infor? mation. This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant EAR-0413265 to CUAHSI and the University of Texas at Austin. ―CHRISTINA BANDARAGODA, Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University, Logan;