OHD/HL - HydroXC: newsletters 2005

In December, we collected and started studying example materials from Consortium members. We have received five samples so far and will continue to follow up with members in the first several weeks of this year. As we complete our review of each sample, including how it might map to or expand our existing hydrologic XML schema, we will share our latest findings with the Consortium members and publish examples on the Consortium website.

We are continuing to study the FLDWAV and FLDVIEW applications and samples of data exchanged between the two. We expect to complete our draft design in January, which will show how that data exchange could use our HydroXC schema. Please let us know if you are actively using these applications and would like to share your experience and data samples with us.

As we mentioned last month, we are planning to hold two Consortium workshops over the next two to three months, via web conferences. We are tentatively scheduling for late February and late March and will send out more information in the next week. In the first conference, we will demonstrate how the HydroXC schema can be used for data exchanges in the FLDWAV and FLDVIEW applications and will facilitate discussions among Consortium members of HydroXC progress to date and desired next steps.

We are also planning updates to the HydroXC website, both to improve navigation and to provide and share more information and data from Consortium members. In the mean time, we will implement a series of smaller updates to information already on the site.

Finally, we would like to thank all of our fellow members for participation in Consortium activities this past year. In addition, special thanks to all of you who provided materials and supported our workshops in 2005. We also appreciate everyone who expressed an interest in Consortium communication, but who cannot contribute to our activities at this time.

In November, we continued to make progress on our HydroXC phase two tasks. We began contacting each Consortium member to request samples of hydrologic data and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. We have already received a few examples. Throughout the next couple of months, we will review each data example in detail and study how it might map to (or expand) our existing hydrologic XML schema. This evaluation will allow us to further develop the current draft schema and the results will be shared with all Consortium members.

We also continued analyzing the data exchange between an existing flood modeling application and a flood model viewing application, currently used at the National Weather Service. As we mentioned before, we are in the progress of designing a HydroXC-compliant interface for these applications. We hope this helps to confirm or improve our phase one XML schema and show how it might be applied to applications currently in use.

We would like to welcome new consortium members to the group - John Halquist and Dan Pokorny of the North Central River Forecast Center in Chanhassen , Minnesota . Stay tuned to the HydroXC community website for their contact information.

Early in the new year we will also hold a couple of Consortium workshops to demonstrate our new progress.

In October, we made significant progress in planning out the second phase of HydroXC. We also began analyzing the data exchange of an existing flood modeling application and flood model viewing application, currently used at the National Weather Service. In the next few weeks we will continue to make progress in designing a HydroXC-compliant interface for these applications, in hopes of confirming and improving upon our phase one XML schema and showing how it might be applied to running applications.

In November, we are going to begin contacting each consortium member organization. We would like to receive more data examples from each of you so that we can continue to experiment with approaches to transforming different kinds of hydrologic data into the HydroXC XML format. Please begin thinking of examples you might share with us!

Once we start receiving examples from you, we will also schedule our first workshop. We will hold 2-3 workshops during this phase to present our data modeling results from the data examples you share with us.

Our last update contained results of the workshop series hosted as a web conference from Apex Digital Systems in Silver Spring , Maryland in June 2005. The Workshop was the logical conclusion of the first phase of HydroXC XML schema development.

We are pleased to announce that we are now starting the second phase of HydroXC, sponsored by the Office of Hydrology of the National Weather Service. During this seven-month phase, we will continue to expand the HydroXC XML Schema in active collaboration with all members. We plan to dedicate more time to working with data examples and experimenting with different approaches to transform hydrology data into the HydroXC XML format. We received a lot of positive feedback from the Workshop in phase one and plan to include 2-3 new workshops as part of the phase two activities. We will be collecting up to ten example data sets from all consortium members and will present our data modeling results during the workshops.

Additionally, we are also going to analyze the data exchange of an existing flood modeling application and flood model viewing application, currently used at the National Weather Service. Once the data exchange structures are understood and documented, we will propose a design for an XML structure that provides the same output and input data, but in a HydroXC-compliant manner. This exercise will provide further insite into our XML schema, as it can be applied to applications in operation today.

We would like to welcome a new consortium member to the group. Jonathan L. Goodall, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of the Practice of Geospatial Analysis joins us from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University . Stay tuned to the HydroXC website for his contact information.