Office of Water Quality Intranet
Data-Quality Ratings for Continuous Water-Quality DataThe data-quality rating program is used to compute and assign categories of data quality (Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Consider Deletion) to specific date ranges of a time-series water-quality record stored in NWIS. Categories are assigned based on the sum of the absolute values of the data corrections from tables 1, 2, and 3 in NWIS, applying criteria provided in USGS Techniques and Methods (TM) 1-D3 (Wagner and others, 2006) for temperature, pH, conductance, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity; or other estimated criteria for parameters not covered in TM 1-D3. The data-quality rating program is a component of the Continuous Water Quality Committee's (CWQC) recommended path for water-quality records. The data-quality rating program was developed by Stewart Rounds (USGS, Portland, OR), with support from the CWQC. ![[ Image: Continuous Water Quality Committee: recommended workflow path. ]](images/dqrating.jpg "Continuous Water Quality Committee recommended workflow path")
Figure 1. Continuous Water Quality Committee recommended path for working with continuous water-quality records. The data-quality rating program is a Perl script that must be run on the unix server that hosts NWIS in your Science Center. Ideally, the script would be placed in a central location (such as/usr/local/bin) on that unix server so that all users in the Science Center can access and use the same program. Ask your system administrator for assistance. Running the program with no optional arguments will produce a report of daily data-quality ratings, where the daily ratings are based on the lowest data-quality rating for the instantaneous values on each date, in accordance with the guidance provided by Wagner and others (2006) in USGS TM 1-D3, attachment 5. Using the optional command-line arguments, the program can produce reports of other types of daily ratings or a summary of the ratings for the instantaneous values. DownloadsThe program is available for any USGS user to download at http://or.water.usgs.gov/uo/wq_monitors/ under the section titled "Data-Quality Rating Program." You also can download the program [70KB PL] directly or download a full package that includes more detailed documentation [170KB ZIP]. Slides from a data-quality rating program training [1.1MB PPTX] are also available. For More InformationFor help with the installation or to report errors or suggested enhancements, please contact Stewart Rounds (sarounds@usgs.gov). Other Continuous Water-Quality Software |
