District Data Review in Preparation for Public Release of NWISWeb

In Reply Refer To: 
Mail Stop 437 


                                 MEMORANDUM 


                                                           July 20, 2000 



TO:      District Chiefs
CC:      All WRD Employees 
FROM:    Alan M. Lumb 
         Chief, NWIS Program Office 

SUBJECT: District Data Review in Preparation for Public Release of NWISWeb

RESPONSE REQUESTED BY August 18, 2000

This memorandum requests your review and final approval of data to be 
served by NWISWeb by August 18, 2000. Upon completion of the review and 
verification please send an email to Susan Trapanese and Alan Lumb, 
smtrapan and amlumb, with your concurrence that we provide public access 
to the system.  Concurrence from each district chief is a crucial final 
step in the process presented to the senior staff.  Provided below are 
references to detailed information to assist your district with data 
review and final selections.

It is very important for all of us to understand the review and resolution 
of problems will not be easy and will require hundreds of data and systems 
support staff working together; and that this review and problem 
resolution for public release is just a start and will continue even after 
public release.  To assist with the resolution of data problems, the 
NWISWeb development and support team will travel to Reston July 31 to 
August 4 to efficiently use and focus their time on resolution of data 
problems that arise.  You are encouraged to review the referenced material 
provided on the web next week and begin the review so that you can take 
advantage of the concentrated support the following week.  You should 
first concentrate on resolving data problems in the site file.  You do not 
need to resolve all data problems in the next four weeks, but you do need 
to make sure the web flags in the site file are properly set so that any 
site with data problems will not be displayed. You also need to be sure 
there are no site-file data problems for critical real-time sites.

Several Districts are very anxious to make the NWISWeb accessible by the 
public to meet the needs of their cooperators.  The seamless interface and 
navigation of the NWISWeb system among disciplines and geographic 
locations requires that all district reviews be completed before the 
system is opened to the public. 

Public release of the NWISWeb will be made a few days after concurrence 
from all districts. Status of district concurrence will be made available 
on the NWISWeb news page, /nwis/news. The current 
district rt_www system will run in parallel and continue to 
be supported until adequate performance for the new system can be 
established and most users have switched to the new system.  Preparation 
of the NWISWeb release for the local server for real-time data will be 
done as the NWISWeb support needs diminish.

DATA REVIEW
For detailed information to assist your district with data review for 
NWISWeb, see: /nwis/help/?data_review.
These web pages provide information on: 
how to revise and resend your data; 
how to set how often data is refreshed; 
how to turn off the display of data in NWISWeb; 
how to use nw_edit to configure and customize you real-time data; and 
how to monitor and trouble-shoot your real-time web-data processes. 

SPECIAL DATA ISSUES 
NWISWeb aggregates and displays the site, water quality, ground-water 
levels and surface water information from District NWIS databases in a 
single, seamless interface. The aggregation of the data for public release 
has revealed some data issues that need to be addressed by districts. The 
most common issues are:
·       Sites/data not displaying on the web due to erroneous District 
codes;
·       Sites and data appearing more than once in NWISWeb due to the site 
being 
"claimed" or shared by more than one District; 
·       Sites appearing on a State's web page that are not operated by 
corresponding District; and 
·       Site file attributes or fields containing information that is 
confusing or 
inappropriate for public display, such as a well owner's name as part of 
the site name. 
These issues and others are addressed by the Office of Ground Water web 
page on GWSI Database Cleanup at 
/usgs/ogw/dbcleanup.html

WATER QUALITY DATA
A reload of the water quality that was recently sent by each district has 
been loaded on the development server and tested and is currently being 
loaded on the water server with completion next week.  Water quality data 
is not loaded for those sites that have data problems in the site file. In 
October after many of those site-file data problems have been resolved, 
the water quality data that has been already sent by each district will be 
again loaded so more of the water quality data will be available.

ASSISTANCE AND COMMUNICATIONS
Please make sure that your district has designated at least one person 
that the NWISWeb team can contact with systems and configuration problems. 
 These designated persons should monitor your real-time processes on the 
NWIS server and install new versions of the software as needed.  Have your 
Lotus LLMA add them to the group we will be creating. We will email your 
NWISWeb district contact when 
these Lotus groups are created and ready to populate.. 

Prior to public release, please designate at least one contact for 
district data questions from the public and have your Lotus LLMA add them 
to the group we will be creating. We will email your NWISWeb district 
contact when 
these Lotus groups are created and ready to populate. 

If you have questions, need assistance, or have problems completing the 
review and final selection of sites, please email GS-W help nwisweb.

Additional Information is available from:
NWISWeb User Manual at /nwis/news?nwisweb_manual
NWISWeb News at /nwis/news