Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2019MN005S

Improving the Understandability of USGS Decision Support Products

Institute: Minnesota
USGS Grant Number: G19AC00237
Year Established: 2019 Start Date: 2019-07-01 End Date: 2019-11-30
Total Federal Funds: $125,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: Not available

Principal Investigators: Jeffrey Peterson

Project Summary: For many years, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has produced three key collections of water map decision support products: Water Watch, Water Quality Watch, and Groundwater Watch. These are foundational USGS products that are accessed by over 350,000 unique users per year for a range of scientific questions and diverse decision contexts. The three product collections were initiated and sponsored by three different technical offices, and as a result, have evolved independently over several decades. This parallel evolution has lead to a suite of products that are not visually harmonized, potentially impacting the synergy of displaying multiple water indicators for a diverse set of user audiences. Recently, USGS has begun the process of merging the three product collections into a dynamic online interface. Using recent advances in visualization science, we propose a multi-step process for diagnosing visual problems in current products. These will serve as the basis for recommended design modifications to be incorporated into the unified data portal. To ensure that diagnoses, recommendations, and subsequent scientific publication of the results meet the needs of stakeholders, we will implement a research co-production model, which incorporates external stakeholder knowledge and needs with USGS’ decision support goals into the entire research process.