Water Resources Division CPAC Home Page

Hello CPAC,

At our long ago Baltimore meeting I was given the assignment to investigate what the National Streamflow Information Program (NSIP) was envisioning in the way of new technologies for data transfer. Since that meeting the NSIP has published a report entitled "Streamflow Information for the Next Century" Open-File Report 99-456.

This report sees our future data dissemination as being web-based and real-time. It discusses Data Access Center and Data Processing Centers and a proposed architecture very similar (and perhaps exactly similar) to the proposed NWIS-WEB system with duplication of data-serving sites and "offline" Data Processing Centers. Poor or missing flow data would be filled in with provisional data from flow models using surrounding gages as input. Along with the raw data, uncertainty estimates would be included.

To view or retrieve the report, one can access URL http://water.usgs.gov/osw/nsip/99-456.pdf

So, in summary, the NSIP is relying on a system to be in place that closely resembles the proposed NWIS-WEB system. CPAC needs to continue to be an advocate for that system.

Jim Kolva