USGS Groundwater Policy > Groundwater Model Archiving

Documenting, Archiving, and Public Release of Numerical Groundwater Flow and Transport Models: Overview

USGS Office of Groundwater (OGW) Technical Memorandum No. 2016.02 provides the policy for documenting, archiving, and releasing numerical groundwater flow and transport models. Companion information for the policy is provided on this website.

The USGS develops groundwater flow and transport models as part of many water-resources investigations. It has been a long-standing OGW policy for groundwater flow and transport models to be archived and made available to the public upon request. Adherence to the OGW policies ensures numerical data and related information that compose these models remain available to:

1. support and validate the results in published reports,
2. assure that working versions of all models are available for future scientific use, and
3. assure that the data are available to the public.

Implementation of a consistent and standardized approach to archiving and public release of USGS groundwater flow and transport models makes these important and valuable data products more accessible, discoverable, and usable by USGS scientists, Cooperators, and the public and reflects current scientific data common practice. The OGW policy 2016.02 also supports USGS compliance with the 2013 Federal Open Data Policy, which requires newly-generated government data to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, while continuing to ensure privacy and security.

About this Site

This web site is designed to help modelers and reviewers comply with OGW Technical Memorandum No. 2016.02. This web site is organized as shown in figure below, where each box represents a separate webpage.

Documenting, Archiving, and Public Release of Numerical Groundwater Flow and Transport Models Webpage Content

While the OGW Technical Memorandum No. 2016.02 provides the policy requirements, this site provides the tools, resources, templates, and other details necessary to implement the policy. As available USGS resources or best practices change over time, this web site will be updated.

Workflow Summary

The workflow for releasing a model archive is shown in the figure below. There are four main steps. Details for each step are described on the corresponding webpage.

Modeler Workflow - Plan, Model, Prep, Review, Release

Contact Martha Watt (mwatt@usgs.gov, 609-771-3908) for assistance prior to starting the archiving and release process to ensure compliance with OGW Technical Memorandum No. 2016.02.

The four main steps are as follows:

1. Setup the model archive according to the structure described here.
2. Prepare the model archive for review.
3. Submit the model archive for review as a USGS data release.
4. Publish the model archive as a USGS data release.

While USGS groundwater flow and transport model archives have long been available at public request, it is expected that download and public use of the model archives will increase significantly once they are easily available online as required by the USGS public access plan. State and local agency, industry, and university stakeholders may all download and run the models once they can be easily discovered and accessed. A detailed quality assurance/quality control check of the model archive is important prior to public release in order to minimize public inquiries and (or) the need for revised releases due to omissions or errors in the publicly available archive.

Additional Information

Additional information can be found on the additional information page.