HR: 08:30h
AN: SF11A-03    [Abstracts]
TI: The Modelshed GeoData Model
AU: Ruddell, B L
EM: bruddell@uiuc.edu
AF: University of Illinois, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801 United States
AU: * Kumar, P
EM: kumar1@uiuc.edu
AF: University of Illinois, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801 United States
AB: In recent years there has been an explosion in the availability of earth science data from satellites, remote sensors and numerical computations. This avalanche of data brings unprecedented opportunities for the study of environmental processes, but has led to new difficulties in organizing and communicating data for study. In many earth science studies, a majority of time and investment is now spent wrestling data into a useful form. Advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial geoprocessing methods ease this burden by streamlining data conversion and visualization. GIS-enabled databases store and organize environmental data in relational structures. Geodata models are applied to organize and describe spatial data in ways useful for particular applications. The ArcHydro data model for water resources has been successfully established as a standard for the modeling and communication of hydrologic datasets, and is being adopted by many branches of government, industry, and the academy. However, it is still difficult to process large gridded datasets from numerical simulations and remote sensors, and to meaningfully relate that data to other objects in an ArcHydro-modeled database. The Modelshed geodata model is presented as a generalized GIS data model for the organization and modeling of diverse geospatial data. It represents point, line, area, and volumetric database objects in three dimensions, and stores timeseries and flux data in association with all model features. It provides data structures to facilitate the geospatial analysis of time-indexed raster datasets and the integration of raster data with the vector structures of the data model. The study of relationships within this data model is simple and powerful, based on queries of indexed data tables in a relational database. Example applications are explored using the unique analysis capabilities of the Modelshed geodata model, including the construction of customized software tools, the visualization of Modelshed data in a GIS, and a climate study using a prototype database of the Illinois River Basin.
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting