Addressing droughts, floods and water quality concerns will be easier nationally with a comprehensive water information system being developed by a water resources engineer at The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. David Maidment, who directs the university’s Center for Research in Water Resources, received a five-year, $4.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a one-stop site on the Web where water-related data from hundreds of federal, state, and local agencies will be available to make water-related decisions. The stress on water supplies created by growing populations makes this project crucial, said Maidment, who received the NSF funds as part of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc.
“With more and more people using fixed water supplies or living next to water that can flood, the personal risk, the pollution and the water shortage potential are all increasing,” said Maidment, who holds the Hussein M. Alharthy Centennial Chair in Civil Engineering.
Ready access to comprehensive water information will help municipalities make more informed responses to water challenges, such as the droughts occurring in Texas.
“Water is a precious resource, and we need to thoroughly understand what effect human activities and other factors are having on it,” Maidment said of the system he is developing with colleagues from Drexel University, Ohio State University and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Currently, if water management personnel in a city such as Austin want to study the status of their water, they might need to obtain streamflow measurements, soil data, and satellite and meteorological data from dozens of organizations. Each gathers the data for different purposes and often stores it using different software, so that it can take months to gain an understanding of the data’s meaning.
Besides providing the nation’s water data at one site, Maidment and colleagues will provide user-friendly Web programs at the site for modeling how a given water resource could change over time. Eventually, the system could become easy enough for recreational sports enthusiasts and others to use in addition to the water resource specialists targeted by the grant.
Maidment, an associate of the U.S. National Academies, has discussed the steps to developing a similar system recently with the director of Australia’s Land and Water Commission. Australia has committed to spending $480 million to construct a water information system as they experience a major drought in their agricultural heartland.
