Integration and Assessment of Information Literacy in an Undergraduate Biology Program: a Sustainable and Transferrable Model

This presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014.

Model Configuration And Data Management In The Short-Term Water Information Forecasting Tools

The Short-term Water Information and Forecasting Tools (SWIFT) is a suite of tools for flood and short-term streamflow forecasting, consisting of a collection of hydrologic model components and utilities. Catchments are modeled using conceptual subareas and a node-link structure for channel routing. The tools comprise modules for calibration, model state updating, output error correction, ensemble runs and data assimilation. Given the combinatorial nature of the modelling experiments and the sub-daily time steps typically used for simulations, the volume of model configurations and time series data is substantial and its management is not trivial. SWIFT is currently used mostly for research purposes but has also been used operationally, with intersecting but significantly different requirements. Early versions of SWIFT used mostly ad-hoc text files handled via Fortran code, with limited use of netCDF for time series data. The configuration and data handling modules have since been redesigned. The model configuration now follows a design where the data model is decoupled from the on-disk persistence mechanism. For research purposes the preferred on-disk format is JSON, to leverage numerous software libraries in a variety of languages, while retaining the legacy option of custom tab-separated text formats when it is a preferred access arrangement for the researcher. By decoupling data model and data persistence, it is much easier to interchangeably use for instance relational databases to provide stricter provenance and audit trail capabilities in an operational flood forecasting context. For the time series data, given the volume and required throughput, text based formats are usually inadequate. A schema derived from CF conventions has been designed to efficiently handle time series for SWIFT.

Verification Of The Standard Vector Data Model For Interoperability Of River-Geospatial Information

Recently, two international standard organizations, ISO and OGC, have done the work of standardization for GIS. Current standardization work for providing interoperability among GIS DB focuses on the design of open interfaces. But, this work has not considered procedures and methods for designing river geospatial data. Eventually, river geospatial data has its own model. When we share the data by open interface among heterogeneous GIS DB, differences between models result in the loss of information. In this study a plan was suggested both to respond to these changes in the information envirnment and to provide a future Smart River-based river information service by understanding the current state of river geospatial data model, improving, redesigning the database. Therefore, primary and foreign key, which can distinguish attribute information and entity linkages, were redefined to increase the usability. Database construction of attribute information and entity relationship diagram have been newly redefined to redesign linkages among tables from the perspective of a river standard database. In addition, this study was undertaken to expand the current supplier-oriented operating system to a demand-oriented operating system by establishing an efficient management of river-related information and a utilization system, capable of adapting to the changes of a river management paradigm.