Research and Development Office

Visualization of climate risk and surface water projection data.

Project ID: 1622
Principal Investigator: Kurt Wille
Research Topic: Water Resource Data Analysis
Funded Fiscal Years: 2016
Keywords: None

Research Question

Can climate risk assessment and surface water projection data be served publicly in an intuitive and visual manner?

Need and Benefit

In 2016, the Bureau of Reclamation has published an updated SECURE Water Act Report to Congress (www.usbr.gov/climate). The report highlights findings from basin-specific collaborative planning studies to provide a West-wide perspective on anticipated impacts to water resources due to climate change and corresponding adaptation strategies.

The public and Congress lacked a means to easily access climate risk and surface water projection data informingg the SECURE Water Act report in a meaningful way. Developing a clear and simple visualization of climate data would allow the public to access and interact with this kind of data. To that end, a web-based product that combines maps of climate projection data with narration and multimedia content to assist users seeking to learn more about projected changes in temperature, precipitation, and snowpack changes across the eight major Reclamation river basins illustrated in the SECURE Water Act report.

Building on the success of developing this portal to support data dissemination and visualization associated with the SECURE Water Act report, the project team offered a second portal-development demonstration, this time for Reclamation's WaterSMART 2010-2016 Progress Report (https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart). The report describes projects initiated from 2010-2016 under the Department of the Interior's WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America's Resources for Tomorrow) program and other conservation activities, which are expected to result in savings of 1.14 million acre-feet of water per year upon completion. The companion web-portal helps readers interact with the report's information about progress made since 2010 to improve water conservation and help water-resource managers narrow the gap between water supply and demand.

Contributing Partners

Contact the Principal Investigator for information about partners.

Research Products

Bureau of Reclamation Review

The following documents were reviewed by experts in fields relating to this project's study and findings. The results were determined to be achieved using valid means.

Access WaterSMART Data Visualization (final, PDF, 392KB)
By Kurt Wille
Publication completed on March 15, 2017

Access SECURE Report Data Visualization (final, PDF, 267KB)
By Kurt Wille
Publication completed on March 15, 2017

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