GTSM: Channeling the Flow of Water Information
New tool bridges water data “divide.”

Less than three percent of the water on earth is fresh, and less than one one-hundredth of that total is present in the lakes, rivers, soil, and the atmosphere. How can we best manage and preserve the small amount that’s available? That’s the question water resource management agencies struggle to answer every day.

It is not for the lack of data that this is such a difficult task. In fact, raw data about our water resources could probably fill a digital ocean. From local SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems to the USGS nationwide network of water resource data collection stations, the quantity of historic and real-time raw water data has grown exponentially over the years.
Yet much of this raw data remains unused because it is not readily available to sophisticated water resource management tools. This is about to change.

PBS&J, in collaboration with the University of Texas Center for Research (CRWR) in Water Resources, ESRI, and DHI, is building up an innovative toolbox called Geospatial Time Series Management (GTSM) that bridges the water data “divide.” When integrated into ESRI’s Arc Hydro geodatabase, GTSM translates water-related data into a single GIS-driven resource accessible to water resource decision makers.

Jack Hampson from PBS&J’s National Water Resource Technology group explains, “Basically we’ve developed a point-and-click way to convert reams of data into usable information, which is available in the right units and the right format to operate within a GIS framework.”

Real-World Application

The conceptual framework for a GTSM is now operational in the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). Working with SFWMD over the last nine months, PBS&J and CRWR have integrated the agency’s SCADA measurement points with its enterprise GIS. The result is a unique relational database environment that links the lakes, canals, control structures, monitoring points, and drainage basins together. Most importantly, the spatial data are linked to time-series data, thus providing the ability to use the GIS with time-series data for water budgets, system status and projections, water quality, and adaptive management.

For SFWMD, GTSM is expected to help address applications for watershed management, hydroperiod analysis, operations decision support, and modeling. In these applications and others, GTSM will allow water operators to make better management decisions based on solid operational and scientific data. In real time, an agency can easily manage data that changes over time and space, such as water levels in a reservoir, flows through a pipe, or rainfall quantities in a combined sewer overflow. Systems can be calibrated, and water movement can be tracked and predicted with more accuracy. This enables water managers to better assess water budgets for a given area or predict short- and long-term water storage requirements.

Hampson concludes, “GTSM brings an order of magnitude improvement to water resource management agencies that are striving to maximize limited water resources or prepare for natural disaster situations such as floods, droughts, or even hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes.”