A Simplified Approach for Water Resources Web Processing Services (WPS) Development

Developing a complex water resources modelling web application can be a daunting task that requires integration of various models and data sources with ever-changing internet technologies. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been shown to be useful for building complex modelling workflows. However, compared with other types of web services such as for data delivery and mapping, the implementation of web processing services (WPS) for water resources modelling and data analysis is not very common. Indeed, tools to simplify the development and deployment of WPS for general modelling cases are lacking. We will present the development and testing of a ready-touse WPS implementation called Tethys WPS Server, which provides a formalized way to expose web application functionality as standardized WPSs in alongside an app’s graphical user interfaces. Our WPS server is Python-based and is created on Tethys Platform by leveraging PyWPS. A case study is provided to demonstrate how web app functionality(s) can be exposed as WPS using our open source package, and show how these WPSs can be coupled to build a complex-modelling app. The advantages of Tethys WPS Server includes: 1) lowering the barrier to OGC WPS development and deployment, 2) providing web services-based access of apps, 3) improving app interoperability and reusability, and facilitate complex modelling implementation.