Keywords
scientific workflow, hydrological modelling
Start Date
1-7-2010 12:00 AM
Abstract
Large-scale hydrological modelling exercises are becoming routine to address concerns about future water availability. These involve coupling multiple models to simulate the water cycle; time is of the essence; and the questions to be answered (and associated indicator metrics) are multi-dimensional. As these exercises become more complex and the volume of data increases exponentially, automating management of the flow of data through models, accessing relevant tools, while ensuring auditability and compliance, become essential. The Hydrologists Workbench (HWB) is being developed to meet this need and its shape and content are informed by recent large-scale sustainable (water) yield modelling exercises in Australia. Built on commercial off-the-shelf scientific workflow software which provides the workflow, audit and governance utility, it draws together public domain and proprietary hydrological, statistical and GIS toolkits with tailored workflows to provide an extensible portal for the provision and management of (one-off or routine) modelling exercises. This paper describes the intent, design structure and current state of development of the HWB and uses the example of a reporting workflow that executes a series of data transformations to produce maps, tables and plots for a monthly water situation report. The paper concludes by identifying key challenges that have emerged, and evaluates progress to date against a priori design objectives.
Hydrologists Workbench – a hydrological domain workflow toolkit
Large-scale hydrological modelling exercises are becoming routine to address concerns about future water availability. These involve coupling multiple models to simulate the water cycle; time is of the essence; and the questions to be answered (and associated indicator metrics) are multi-dimensional. As these exercises become more complex and the volume of data increases exponentially, automating management of the flow of data through models, accessing relevant tools, while ensuring auditability and compliance, become essential. The Hydrologists Workbench (HWB) is being developed to meet this need and its shape and content are informed by recent large-scale sustainable (water) yield modelling exercises in Australia. Built on commercial off-the-shelf scientific workflow software which provides the workflow, audit and governance utility, it draws together public domain and proprietary hydrological, statistical and GIS toolkits with tailored workflows to provide an extensible portal for the provision and management of (one-off or routine) modelling exercises. This paper describes the intent, design structure and current state of development of the HWB and uses the example of a reporting workflow that executes a series of data transformations to produce maps, tables and plots for a monthly water situation report. The paper concludes by identifying key challenges that have emerged, and evaluates progress to date against a priori design objectives.
