Development and testing of a GIS-based hydrologic data management, analysis, and modeling software system

A significant impediment to the sharing of hydrologic data lies in challenges associated with data discovery and access via the internet. The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) has developed a Hydrologic Information System (HIS) for the purpose of promoting data sharing using well defined databases, servers, and web services. This dissertation presents three specific studies related to the CUAHSI HIS. First, the design, development, and testing of a desktop software program called HydroDesktop intended for simplifying the discovery and access of data from within the broader CUAHSI HIS and for conducting simple analysis of these data with embedded geospatial and temporal data analysis and modeling functions. Five specific use cases or tests of the software were defined and conducted using HydroDesktop, the USGS National Water Information System (NW IS), and the EPA STORage and RETrieval (STORET) systems. Results of these tests show that the use of HydroDesktop is 27.0% to 72.3% more efficient than the other methods tested; Second, an approach for integrating geospatial modeling functions with an existing third-party library is presented and tested. The technique presented proved to be 98.1% more efficient than writing the needed algorithms from scratch; Third, a method for sharing hydrologic data analyses using the NuGet extension management system is presented and shown to be 62.4% to 90.6% more efficient than the alternative methods for sharing data and analyses in HydroDesktop.