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Integrated Hydrologic Science and Environmental Engineering Observatory: CLEANER’s1 Vision for the WATERS Network Jami L. Montgomery, CLEANER Project Office; Barbara Minsker; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jerald Schnoor, University of Iowa; Charles N. Haas, Drexel University Abstract. As population levels and the rate of urban development rise in the U.S. and

elsewhere, industrialized societies around the world grow increasingly concerned with

balancing the need to maintain water supplies of adequate quantity and quality for human

use while preserving the integrity of aquatic ecosystems. Researchers are now in a

position to answer questions about multiscale, spatiotemporally distributed hydrologic

and environmental phenomena through the use of remote and embedded networked

sensing technologies. It is now possible for data streaming from sensor networks to be

integrated by a rich cyberinfrastructure encompassing the innovative computing,

visualization, and information archiving strategies needed to cope with the anticipated

onslaught of data, and to turn that data around in the form of real-time water quantity and

quality forecasting. The goal of this NSF Project Office effort is to devise a plan for a

national network of hydrologic and environmental observatories where scientists and

engineers from multiple disciplines interact in gathering data and posing and testing

hypotheses. In July 2005, NSF awarded $2 million to a coalition of 12 institutions to

establish the CLEANER Project Office (Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis

Network for Environmental Research; http://cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu). Over the next two

years the project office, in coordination with CUAHSI (Consortium of Universities for

the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.; http://www.cuahsi.org), will work together

to develop a WATer and Environmental Research Systems Network (WATERS

1 The CLEANER Project Office is supported by NSF Award # BES05-33513

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Network), which is envisioned to be a collaborative scientific exploration and

engineering analysis network, using high performance tools and infrastructure, to

transform our scientific understanding of environmental change in human dominated

environmental systems.

Introduction

As population levels and the rate of urban development rise in the U.S. and elsewhere,

industrialized societies around the world grow increasingly concerned with balancing the

need to maintain water supplies of adequate quantity and quality for human use while

preserving the integrity of aquatic ecosystems. Common practices associated with

modern living often negatively impact the environment. For example, commercial

fertilization of agricultural fields and the use of confined animal feeding lots for raising

livestock can result in significant run-off of nutrients and microorganisms into nearby

surface and ground waters. In some cities, untreated (or minimally treated) stormwater,

containing substantial loadings of pathogens, nutrients and chemicals, is discharged into

the nearest body of water. Along major rivers around the world, drinking water intakes

are located downstream from wastewater treatment plants and industrial dischargers. In

some cases, two or more of these stressors are impacting the same waterbody. Mitigating

just one of these situations often depends on understanding how it relates to others and

how stressors can vary in temporal and spatial scales. And because many of these issues

are tied to where people choose to live and how they earn their living, scientists and

engineers also must also factor in the social and economic impacts, not just

environmental science, when considering solutions to these problems.

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To begin to understand these complex situations, scientists and engineers need to collect

and integrate real-time data from watersheds, rivers, estuaries, coasts and cities

throughout the country. Environmental engineering needs to integrate information from

the laboratory or single field sites with information from larger scale, more

geographically diverse, observatories in order to solve modern and more complex

environmental problems. It is only now with the advent of grid computing, new data-

mining techniques, and novel wireless sensors, that researchers are finally in a position to

begin to answer cutting edge research questions about multiscale, spatio-temporally

distributed hydrologic and environmental phenomena.

CLEANER’s Evolution

The goal of CLEANER (Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for

Environmental Research) is to transform and advance the scientific and engineering

knowledge base in order to address the challenges of complex, large-scale, human-

stressed environmental systems. As early as 2001, scientists and engineers began to

discuss the need for such a network in order to enable them to better understand human-

dominated environmental systems, their stressors, and the links between them. The idea

of CLEANER evolved over the next four years as the Environmental Engineering

Program at NSF sponsored workshops and a national symposium to gather community

input.2 Preliminary paper studies3 were also conducted on the cyberinfrastructure and

field facilities that would be needed to make this network operational. These studies

2 For more information on previous CLEANER workshops go to http://cleaner.nacse.org/workshops/index.html 3 NSF awarded 12 planning grants in 2004 to researchers at 22 institutions

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were primarily focused on contaminated water resources because 1) they have the

potential to pose a significant threat to human health; and 2) significant amounts of data

exist from multiple environmental systems in the U.S. (e.g. estuaries, coastal regions,

ground-water, aquifers and lakes) and for multiple contaminants (e.g. nutrient

enrichment, pathogenic microorganisms, organic chemicals and heavy metals). In July

2005, the Engineering Directorate at NSF awarded $2 million to a coalition of 12

institutions, led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), to establish

the CLEANER Project Office (http://cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu). The project office is co-

directed by Barbara Minsker of UIUC, Charles Haas of Drexel University, and Jerald

Schnoor of the University of Iowa.

The CLEANER initiative shares several important characteristics with the hydrologic

science initiative in the NSF Geosciences Directorate, called Hydroview. This latter

initiative has been developed by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of

Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI, www.cuahsi.org) and includes observatories,

measurement technology, information systems, and synthesis. Recognizing that the study

of surface and groundwater processes and how anthropogenic inputs can affect human

and environmental health cuts across scientific disciplines, NSF decided in 2005 that the

two initiatives should be coordinated. Consequently CLEANER and CUAHSI are

combining efforts to seek Major Research and Equipment Facilities Construction

(MREFC) funding in 2011 for a dual-purpose network called the WATer and

Environmental Research Systems (WATERS) Network, which would serve the needs of

both the hydrologic science and environmental engineering research communities.

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CLEANER’s Planning Process

By July 2007, the CLEANER Project Office and CUAHSI will produce an environmental

engineering and hydrologic science program plan identifying cutting-edge scientific

questions that the WATERS Network could address as well as an overall network design

that includes research and education plans, timelines, milestones, and the scope of

facilities, resources, and research required. Ultimately the plan will lay the foundation

for a new infrastructure that will transform the way both environmental research and

education are conducted.

To realize this grand vision, the CLEANER Project Office has formed an advisory board

and six standing committees on cyberinfrastructure, education and outreach,

environmental engineering and science, organization, sensors, and social science. These

committees, led by an executive committee, cover a broad range of academic disciplines

including environmental engineering and science, social science, economics, education,

and information and sensor technology.4 Since September 2005, the committees have

been hard at work developing planning documents critical to the design and future

success of the network. Starting Summer 2006, CLEANER and CUAHSI will work

together to develop a joint vision for the network. Final drafts of the joint plans will be

available for public comment and community input in early 2007. In 2007 a non-profit

corporation (WATERS Inc.) will be formed to lead and manage the eventual construction

and operation of the WATERS Network. 4 For a complete list of the committee members see http://cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu/people/.

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CLEANER (WATERS Network) Timeline

July 2005 Establish project office

March 2006 Initial drafts of CLEANER science, education, and sensor network plans, strategy for integrating social sciences, and proposed organizational structure for the WATERS Network

July 2006 Complete draft of all planning documents for CLEANER’s vision for the WATERS Network

Oct 2006

Complete draft of joint CLEANER-CUAHSI WATERS Network program plan

Jan 2007 Complete draft of WATERS Network conceptual design

Jan 2007 Establish WATERS Inc. consortium

Feb-March 2007 Public comment period for WATERS Network conceptual design and joint program plan documents

July 2007 Submit preliminary program plan to NSF

Aug 2007 - Aug 2008

Develop preliminary project execution plan

Nov 2007 Present to NSF MREFC panel

Fall 2008 Achieve baseline scientific readiness in MREFC process

Jan 2010 President announces FY 2011 proposed budget

Fall 2010 NSF makes award to consortium for construction of network

Fall 2014 Network launched

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CLEANER’s Vision for the WATERS Network Draft Grand Challenge (from the March 7-8th CLEANER All-Hands meeting)

How do we detect, predict and manage the effects of human activities and natural

perturbations on the quantity, distribution and quality of water?

The driving force behind the WATERS Network is the need to be able to provide

adequate water quantity and quality for human use while maintaining the integrity of

aquatic ecosystems in the U.S. Water management at the ecosystem scale in the U.S. can

extend along very large spatial scales and cross political boundaries. While monitoring

for traditional water quality and water quantity parameters has been conducted in this

country for decades, the responsibility for this monitoring has been fragmented across

local, state, and federal agencies. Consequently these data sources are disconnected and

are not easily accessible to researchers that are interested in investigating large-scale

environmental phenomena. The WATERS Network hopes to address this deficiency by

providing access to near-real time water quality and quantity data for fresh water and

estuarine ecosystems across the country. With the construction of the network individual

investigators will have an unprecedented opportunity to leverage data from laboratory

investigations and single field sites with data collected nationwide and to collaborate with

their colleagues in real-time on complex environmental research questions. We expect

that the scientific findings and information resulting from such studies will provide a

knowledge base for watershed managers and policy makers to assist them in their efforts

to prevent further degradation of our nation’s water resources.

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More specifically, the CLEANER Project Office envisions that the WATERS Network

will consist of four main components:

• A network of highly instrumented research field facilities for acquisition

and analysis of environmental data;

• An environmental cyberinfrastructure data archive and information

technology for engineering modeling, analysis and visualization of data;

• A multidisciplinary integration of research and education to exploit

instrumented sites and networked information; formulate engineering and

policy options to protect, remediate, and restore stressed environments and

promote sustainable environmental resources; and

• A collaboration among engineers, natural and social scientists, educators,

policy makers, industry, NGOs, the public, and other stakeholders.

Integrated CyberInfrastructure5

An integrated cyberinfrastructure network is critical to meeting the above grand

challenge. This integrated network needs to include tools for collection, storage and

dissemination of environmental data, models that can be employed in near real-time, and

collaboration tools that will help multi-disciplinary and geographically dispersed teams of

researchers work together effectively. The CLEANER project office is using a

5 Text taken from draft Environmental Engineering and Science plan presented at the March 7th -8th CLEANER All-Hands Meeting; authored by CLEANER Environmental Engineering and Science Committee

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collaboratory6 to facilitate the MREFC planning process and we envision that a

collaboratory will also be an integral part of the WATERS Network.

Among the cyberinfrastructure needs for a network capable of adequately identifying,

monitoring and analyzing processes relevant to water resources research are:

• Sensor hardware for data collection at field facilities within the observatory;

• High-speed data transmission and high-capacity data storage to manage the

field sensor data;

• Computational hardware and resources for retrieval and visualization;

• Computational hardware and software for data interpretation, modeling,

parameterization and prediction, and collaboration for remote researchers to

share and interpret these results; and

• Experts and technical staff to support and manage the collaboratory.

The cyberinfrastructure will be capable of collecting and storing information on both

important components7 of a system of interest and fluxes across individual component

boundaries. This cyberinfrastructure will also facilitate quantification of storages and

transfers within components of a system through models that will interface with raw data

stored in the WATERS Network collaboratory.

6 A collaboratory is an integrated system for automated collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis of data accessible by multiple parties through a Web portal. It includes various tools for real-time collaboration with other remotely based researchers and provides access to the monitoring information collected by an observatory’s field facilities, as well as historical and other relevant data. Analytical (e.g., statistical), modeling and visualization tools needed to conduct engineering analyses are provided within the system. 7 A component could either be a hydrologic unit such as a bay or groundwater aquifer or could refer to media such as sediment

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Sensor Networking

The WATERS Network will be based on a distributed network of interchangeable arrays

of remote and embedded stationary and mobile sensors. Observations will range from

satellite and remote sensing data down to the level of individual deployed sensors. The

hypothetical scope of the WATERS network is envisioned below8.

Integrating Social Science into the WATERS Network

Integrating social science research into environmental research is critical to facilitating

better decision-making on environmental issues. It is at the earliest stages of study 8 Figure taken from draft WATERS Network Sensor Network plan presented at the March 7th -8th CLEANER All-Hands Meeting

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design where key hypotheses are identified and decisions on how and what data to collect

are made. Failure to consider key regulatory constraints and economic and social forces

can lead to a study design plan that is inadequate to address critical drivers in complex

environmental systems. It is also important to understand how data and scientific results

may be used by policy makers in order to prevent data from being ignored or even

misused. Recognizing this, the CLEANER Social Science committee has been charged

with identifying the social and economic forces relating to the use (and degradation) of

water resources, and the degree to which scientific and technical information developed

by the WATERS Network can constructively promote wiser management of these

resources.

The Role of Education in the WATERS Network

Education and outreach are also critical to the success of the WATERS Network as they

address significant workforce issues and have the potential to transform environmental

education at all levels. Educational activities will be integral to all WATERS Network

research projects. By providing access to professional communities that are focused on

important aspects of environmental research, students at all educational levels can share

and participate in the research. The following is a partial list of the educational benefits9

expected from participation in the network:

• Providing real life data for exploration and demonstration by students (K-12

through graduate levels);

• Enhancing the relevance and quality of instructional materials;

9 Taken from the draft WATERS Network Education Plan presented at the March 7th -8th CLEANER All-Hands Meeting; section authored by Timothy Wentling and James Johnson.

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• Linking educators and their students with scientists;

• Providing a basis for learning about environmental policy through simulations;

• Providing structured experiences for graduate students (assistantships, etc) to

prepare them for leadership roles in engineering and science; and

• Allowing university faculty access to data and research findings to enhance their

own research and teaching.

The CLEANER project office envisions that the WATERS Network will provide

students and their instructors with shared knowledge, real data, and recent research

findings.

For More Information

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