Background

In a 2005 statewide survey of researchers, water management decision-makers, industry representatives and many others, the most frequent request from stakeholders in the water resources community was better access to water-related data. In response, the Arizona Water Institute (AWI) designated the Arizona Hydrologic Information System (AHIS) as one of its priority projects. AHIS will provide a one-stop resource for water-related data across the state of Arizona, linking users with widespread and diverse information sources. The system will connect government agencies, the three state universities, county and municipal governments, and databases developed and maintained in the private sector. Its user-friendly format and services will not only enable simple access, but will also allow visualization and manipulation of data to aid in forming responses to complex questions.

AHIS development began as one of AWI’s four first-year projects in 2006. In collaboration with developers at the University of Arizona NSF Science & Technology Center (STC) for Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHRA) and at state agencies in Arizona, the ArizonaWells and ArizonaWater components were developed. In 2007, AWI funded a project to develop this prototype web service – the "information backbone" of the Arizona Water Institute – to connect with stored information from numerous sources. Our staff and affiliated researchers have been working on this web portal in order to match these web services to data at the the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR), Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), the Salt River Project (SRP) and numerous valuable information providers from federal to local levels. Many of these data providers also contribute to AHIS as development partners, facilitating access to locally-held information through specific project partnerships and their generous contribution of IT resources and efforts oriented on facilitating access to archived and real-time information sources.

Purpose & Vision

AHIS provides a comprehensive framework for knowledge management and information discovery using data related to physiographic surveys, hydrologic observations, and water resources monitoring and assessment throughout the State of Arizona. The development of AHIS is a state-wide, collaborative effort led by AWI and involving three state universities (the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University), three state administrative departments (the Arizona Departments of Water Resources, Environmental Quality, and Commerce), numerous federal agencies (e.g., the USGS, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Weather Service), regional water and power providers (e.g., the Central Arizona Project, the Salt River Project, and local water utilities), county and municipal organizations throughout the state, tribal authorities, nongovernmental organizations, and volunteer observer networks.

The goal of the AHIS initiative is to bring together the information held and provided by these entities regarding all aspects of water availability, quality, and use so that:

1. these data can be more widely disseminated to the user community,
2. the combination of multiple data sources and types may lead to the development of new information and knowledge by correlation and analysis, and
3. the combined wealth of data may be of greater use to stakeholders and decision-makers in water-related communities of practice.

The approach to AHIS development remains inherently multi-disciplinary and addresses the needs of data collectors, providers and consumers in numerous water-related fields from both scientific and engineering perspectives. It is intended that the data clearinghouse and analytical tools made available in AHIS will provide invaluable support to governmental agencies and affiliated policymakers, tribal organizations and groups, private firms and consulting services, and academic research and technology development for hydrology- and water-related planning, education and outreach within Arizona and throughout the arid and semi-arid Southwest.

Plans for the 2009 project year

In the 2009 funding year, we seek to continue and build upon the success of previous AWI-funded AHIS projects that have led to the development of basic system functionality. In the proposed project year we will enhance public portal features, as by the incorporation of pre-existing components such as the SAHRA RainLog and ArizonaWells datasets. This year’s main emphasis will be on building capacity for archiving and making accessible small research and geospatial datasets. We still endeavor to include additional point-based time series datasets (as from the NWS, USGS, ADWR, SRP, and ADEQ) as those are made available to us. The proposed work will take us beyond the adoption of CUAHSI standards toward open-source solutions and data standards in order to handle a different, but equally important, class of datasets. As we more fully develop our capacity for handling large point-based time series and spatial information using example datasets, we will also focus on streamlining the processes for uploading and documentation of smaller, more complex datasets. We will expand upon the AHIS metadata catalog, metadata editor functionality, and metadata search capabilities, as well as dataset preview and upload/download functionalities. Finally, we will seek the further development and expansion of AHIS by efforts at external funding, including the submission of proposals to NSF and other agencies, and the continued development of collaborative opportunities with both in-state and external project partners.