Cloud-based Watershed and Terrestrial Ecosystem Data Management, Integration, and Analytics

Actionable understanding of watershed and ecosystem behavior is required for a wide spectrum of societal and engineering needs by both government entities and commercial entities. These needs include, for example, water resource management, precision agriculture and hydropower. Such actionable understanding requires the ability to numerically model various coupled processes and associated reactions that occur across different temporal and spatial scales and translate the results to actionable information. The multi domain data required for these modeling efforts is generated by multiple providers at multiple scales and is rapidly increasing in volume. It is currently practically impossible for model scientists to effectively use this data because of its variability, volume and the rate at which this data is being generated. This is the Big Data problem that this SBIR addresses. A cloud based software package is being developed for heterogeneous data ingestion, qa/qc and analysis, process simulation and system control. This software package will automatically ingest, manage and track data from different providers and make it accessible and discoverable by end users. Analytical tools and numerical models will be implemented in this framework and will allow the generation of actionable information which will allow for system control. In Phase I we enhanced a complex data model, implemented remote sensing and imagery data processing pipelines and coupled parameter estimation frameworks with a reactive transport code. In Phase II we will add additional analytical capabilities, implement advanced modeling capabilities and in silico control into our software package. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: Our software will allow commercial users to efficiently and automatically monitor and understand the behavior of water resource systems and agricultural sites, and use this understanding to optimize and control operational efforts.