The World Economic Forum has ranked the Global Risks for 2018. With the single exception of cyber-security, water is a key factor in the seven other top-ranked high-impact and high-likelihood risks.
Hydrology Corner Blog: water data
Does More Water Data Mean Better Water Outcomes?
Water has always been important. The perception of its importance is closely linked to episodes of too much, too little, or the wrong quality. Climate change, urban growth, and agricultural intensification are just three examples of pressures that are contributing to an unprecedented global awareness of the importance of water.
The Quest for Alpha
A reverse evolution in streamflow measurement technology is underway. In the beginning, stream velocity was measured by putting floats in the current and measuring the transit time of those floats over a known distance.
The Need for Better Monitoring to Protect Canada’s Freshwater Resources
Canada has an abundance of freshwater. Our belief in this abundance is deeply embedded in our culture, so much so, that a recent survey shows that Canadians are not inclined to spend tax dollars on water. However, the evidence doesn’t justify our confidence.
When Experience Matters: Stream Gauging at the Limits of Technology
The North American Stream Hydrographers (NASH) hosted a Q competition at the Alberta Irrigation Technology Center (AITC) in Lethbridge, Alberta on June 8th. However, this wasn’t a typical flow regatta.
Just How Dense Are We? Does Our Choice of Dimension Affect Our Understanding of Water Processes & Policies?
We usually report water quantity information as a volumetric rate (e.g. m3/s); we usually report water quality information as a concentration (e.g. mg/l); and we usually report precipitation as a length (e.g. mm). But we don’t have to. The mass of water is related to its volume by its density which, conveniently, can be assumed to be unity (1). This means that we could just as easily report water information using the dimension of mass. Would reporting water information in a different dimension change the way that we understand water?
How Improbable is a One-In 1,000 Year Flood Event?
The Governor of the State of South Carolina points out to reporters in every press conference that the floods are a one-in-1000 year event. In other words, the devastation from these floods is not our fault, this is an extremely improbable event and there is no way we could have been prepared for it. The…
The Economics of Hydrometric Data Quality
Data about water quantity and water quality are fundamental to some of the most important decisions made by engineers and in choices made by societies. Abundance and quality of water are critical factors in many aspects of our economy, our environment, and our social and physical well-being. It is the case than multiple water resources objectives must be simultaneously managed. The costs of sub-optimal water resources choices can be substantial. Uncertainty is antagonistic to optimization.
Closing the Gap in Hydrometric Data – A Call for Your Participation
How long is the tail of hydrometry? A solution for the gap between data availability and the impacts of water variability, across all scales of interest, on people and the environment is needed. One of my great hopes for the development of OGC standards for interoperable hydrometric data is that it will shed light on…
Soothing a Sting to the Integrity of Science
Scientific knowledge shapes many of our collective beliefs and decisions, but what of its integrity? It’s a question that’s receiving increasing attention, most recently because of a strategically orchestrated sting operation by Science Magazine’s John Bohannon involving the submission of intentionally flawed papers to over 300 open-access journals 1. It revealed a less than pretty…
Lying with Statistics: Every Day Has 2 Midnights & Every Midnight has 2 Days
“It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without statistics.” Andrejs Dunkel. Time series statistics are awkward. Time series statistic are absolutely necessary. They distill the essential truth from very large volumes of data. The statistics that are most useful are very simple concepts such as max, min, mean…
Mitigating Risk for Risk Mitigation: What L’Aquila Means for Water Monitoring
On October 22, 2012, six Italian scientists and a government official were sentenced to 6 years in jail, given lifetime bans on holding public office, and ordered to pay compensation of €7.8m in connection with the L’Aquila earthquake. The 6.3 magnitude earthquake injured over 1,000 people and resulted in 300 deaths. The judgment was based…
Current trends in Hydrometric Monitoring 2012
One of the great things about hydrometric monitoring is the field work. You have to install things, measure things and maintain things and there is something that needs doing just about everywhere, all of the time. Sometimes, the weather, or the working conditions, may be unpleasant but most stream hydrographers would agree that a bad…
Accuracy and Error of Hydrological Measurements – Part 2
Click here to read Part 1 – background about measurement accuracy and error, definitions and more This series of discussions are to first give you a scientific picture of hydrological measurement errors and then open the interesting discussion of how to automatically detect, validate and correct erroneous sensor data given the observations from Data Acquisition…
Accuracy and Error of Hydrological Measurements – Part 1
Environmental agencies and organizations invest huge amount of money to build the required hardware and software infrastructure for collecting and storing data from field sensors in order to extract valuable information hidden in the time series numbers about the environment. If the sensor measurements could not accurately represent the environmental parameter of interest, the extracted…