11 May 2016 —The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has approved the WaterML2.0 Part 2 – Ratings, Gaugings and Sections Standard as an official OGC standard.
WaterML2.0 represents an initiative within the joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO) / OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group to address standards development and interoperability of hydrological information systems at an international level. The first part of WaterML2.0 focused on a standard information model, and an XML encoding derived from that model, for time series of hydrological observations.
The WaterML2.0 Part 2 – Ratings, Gaugings and Sections Standard describes an information model for exchanging rating tables, gauging observations, and river sections. These are part of most surface water monitoring programs and are used in daily operations, including reporting, analysis, modelling and forecasting. This type of data is becoming increasingly important to exchange and share outside the scope of single organisations, as studies into floodplain management and determination of flood risk often cross state and international boundaries.
WaterML2.0 part 2 was developed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), United States Geological Survey (USGS), Aquatic Informatics, KISTERS and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
The WaterML2.0 Part 2 – Ratings, Gaugings and Sections Standard can be viewed by following the link under the ‘Documents and Downloads’ section on the following page: www.opengeospatial.org/standards/waterml.
About the OGC
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.
