Harmonization - Towards A Standardized River Geometry Format

RiverML is a proposed language for conveying a description of river channel and floodplain geometry and flow characteristics through the internet in a standardized way, which is currently in the early stages of development. RiverML is a joint effort between the CUAHSI HydroShare development team, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) / Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Hydrology Domain Working Group, and an international community of data providers, data users, and software developers. In order to create a standard that will serve the needs of the international hydrologic community, a harmonization effort of three forms of data is presented. First, relevant initiatives from public and private agencies around the world at the international, national, and regional levels are identified. Second, the input requirements and naming conventions for a collection of both design and research-oriented hydraulic software packages are compared. Third, the advantages and limitations of existing transfer formats are investigated. From these data, the goals of an international standard for river geometry are formulated as a set of use cases. The commonalities between existing workflows are used to establish the key information content which a standard format should convey. Finally, recommendations for the functional form and anticipated challenges to development are described