SUMMARY

This interoperability experiment will advance the development of WaterML 2.0, test its use with various OGC service standards (SOS, WFS, WMS and CSW). It will also contribute to the development of a hydrology domain feature model and vocabularies, which are essential for interoperability in the hydrology domain.

The use of O&M compliant WaterML 2.0 and OGC web services for data exchange will allow for easier access and interpretation of water data. The ultimate use of the exposed data will depend on the context of participating organizations and their driving requirements. We expect the IE will result in further development of WaterML 2.0, including a schema, example instances, and documentation describing the schema. It will also result in a documented evaluation of the compatibility of WaterML 2.0 with OGC services, which can feed back to OGC. In particular, surface water datasets typically contain a large number of observations at a small number of locations, which will test WaterML 2.0 in new ways. This contrasts and complements the Groundwater IE in which there are many locations with a comparative small number of observations. We expect that the project will discover issues related transferring large timeseries of observations. New and upgraded web services amongst participants are also expected, increasing the overall availability of water data and the interoperability of water information systems. Development of client applications is a secondary concern; the focus of work is testing information models and service delivery mechanisms.

INITIATOR ORGANIZATIONS

The WMO is supporting the Interoperability Experiment within the scope of the existing MoU between OGC and WMO. The OGC members who initiated this Interoperability Experiment are:

  • disy Informationssysteme GmbH
  • US Geological Survey (USGS)
  • IOW-Sandre
  • Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
  • KISTERS Environmental and Resource Management Software Solutions (KISTERS, DE)
  • Service Centre Information Technology of the BMVBS (DLZ-IT BMVBS, DE)

PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS

Other OGC members participating in the Interoperability Experiment are:

  • Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI)
  • 52° North Initiative for Geospatial Open Source Software (52NORTH, DE)