Biography:

Ilya Zaslavsky is director of Spatial Information Systems Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on distributed information management systems and spatial and temporal data integration. Zaslavsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1995), and earlier a Ph.D. equivalent from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990). He has been leading design and technical development in several large cyberinfrastructure projects supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, including the national-scale EarthCube and Hydrologic Information System. He is a co-chair of the OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group which develops international standards for water data.

Abstract:

Integration of distributed hydrologic information for desertification and biodiversity applications:

Desertification and loss of biodiversity are major environmental and socio-economic challenges. A number of systems for analyzing and predicting droughts and associated desertification processes have been developed for the Mediterranean and other areas. These systems rely on monitoring of water supply conditions, with observations obtained from a number of measurement networks of different types. Heterogeneity in data formats and access protocols across such monitoring systems has been a common issue complicating analysis, modeling and forecasting. This presentation will focus on recent international efforts to standardize formats and protocols for exchanging water observations. In 2012, a first international standard for water data exchange, Water Markup Language 2.0, has been adopted, through the efforts of the Hydrology Domain Working Group of the World Meteorological Organization and the Open Geospatial Consortium. We discuss the status of standardization for water resource data and hydrologic features, and demonstrate how standards-based water information systems are used to build local capacity for more comprehensive integrated analysis and modeling of key environmental processes at various scales.