SUMMARY

The GW IE was designed to: (1) test the use of both WaterML 2 and Groundwater ML (GWML) with the SOS and WFS OGC web services, respectively, (2) test compatibility with industry software clients, and (3) to facilitate sharing of massive volumes of sensor-based water level observations and related water-well features across the Canada and USA border.

The GW IE concluded that delivery of groundwater feature data via WFS and GWML, and delivery of groundwater observation data via SOS and WaterML 2, was adequate for schematic interoperability across the US and Canada border, only once best practices were developed for the deployment of these standards and related technologies. It also concluded that deployment of the standards, specifications, and best practices by clients allowed for reasonable viewing and downloading of feature and observation data. However, querying groundwater observations, as time series, is still a challenging task requiring further development of standards.

Several issues and change requests to OGC SOS were identified to improve support for WaterML 2 as a profile of O&M. Many of these were addressed in SOS 2.0, but others remain. See OGC 10-194r3 GWIE Final Report, and GW IE twiki for details.

INITIATOR ORGANIZATIONS

The OGC members who initiated this Interoperability Experiment are:

  • Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
  • US Geological Survey (USGS)
  • Australia Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)

PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS

Other OGC members participating in the Interoperability Experiment are:

  • Geology Survey of Canada, Natural Resources of Canada (GSC)
  • Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI)
  • National Center for Supercomputing Applications / Illinois State
    Water Survey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA)
  • University of Calgary (UoC)
  • 34 North
  • Kisters AG (KIS)