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Agreement between the USGS Water Resources Division and the EPA Assessment and Watershed Protection Division on the Solution of the STORET/NWIS Compatibility Issue May 17, 2000
The goal of this agreement is to ensure that to the public, both
STORET and NWIS offer a common view, with similarly named data
elements holding similarly defined data, and that NWIS and STORET
would share standards for nomenclature and format to support such
a common view, with the goal of enabling easy integration by the
public of such data for analysis.
Further, it is a goal to ensure that both NWIS and STORET will
offer the general public access to this common view of their data,
over the Internet, with support for both browsing and downloading
data. With the previous mainframe version of STORET, the USGS
loaded all of their data into STORET. With the availability of
web-based data retrievals and the agreement to have a common view
on the web of both STORET and USGS data, it is no longer necessary
or desirable for all USGS data to be loaded into STORET.
It is also our goal to ensure ease of transfer of data for those
cooperating agencies with whom USGS has a cooperative agreement,
and who desire to have the data from the cooperative agreement
in their own copy of STORET.
Actions to Achieve these goals:
- Enhance the water quality portion of NWIS to incorporate additional
fields which will hold formal descriptions of processes and
equipment. These additional fields will include those required
by the STORET software for data storage.
- Construct an automated batch data entry process such that
data residing in NWIS can be extracted in a form which can be
updated directly into a copy of STORET.
- Define coding identifiers that the cooperating agencies will
use to prepare their STORET for entry of data from the NWIS
batch files.
- This batch data entry shall be extended to cooperating agencies
of both USGS and STORET, supported there by both software and
suites of codes managed by the USGS for this purpose.
- Using this software and these suites of codes, cooperating
agencies will be able to add to their local copies of STORET,
such data as are generated for them by the USGS, and which have
been first placed in NWIS.
- It is the intent of both parties that these goals be met by
the first half of calendar year 2002.
- In the interim, both NWIS and STORET will be web enabled,
with links to each other, within 6 months. A true common view
from both systems will be achieved durign calendar year 2002.
Responsibilities:
- EPA will maintain and operate a central STORET data warehouse,
providing the public the ability to browse or download STORET
data, and will fully support the common nomenclature, format,
and data definitions mutually agreed to with USGS.
- USGS will maintain and operate NWISWeb, providing the public
the ability to browse or download USGS data and will fully support
the common nomenclature, format, and data definitions mutually
agreed to with EPA.
- EPA will provide functioning STORET capability, including
software, database specifications, and training as required
to make STORET operational in all those offices within the USGS
which are designated by them.
- USGS will enhance the water quality portion of NWIS to include
an ability to archive the process and equipment descriptions.
These additional fields will include those required by the STORET
software for data storage. EPA will provide full technical details
concerning the design of STORET to facilitate this goal.
- USGS will develop software, which will extract data from NWIS,
and convert these data into a STORET-compatible format, ready
for batch entry into a local copy of STORET.
- USGS will develop a suite of code identifiers which, when
entered into the receiving copy of STORET, will make it compatible
with this extract of NWIS data, and which will allow the NWIS
data extract to pass all edit checks of the STORET batch data
entry subsystem, at which point these data will be updated into
STORET.
- For cooperating agencies desiring to load NWIS data, the USGS
will publish documentation and usage details of these code identifiers,
and upon their adoption by each State client, the State copy
of STORET will be able to batch load analytical data produced
by the NWIS system.
Assumptions:
EPA assumes that STORET will be operational at release level
2.0 within one year of the date of this agreement.
USGS assumes that NWIS will be operational at release level 5_1
prior to implementation of the software/code suite solution outlined
above.
Future releases of NWIS and STORET will be coordinated so that
their compatibility is maintained.
The signatories below indicate approval of this agreement.
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(Signature) Robert M. Hirsch
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(Signature) Margarete Heber /for/
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Robert
M. Hirsch
Chief Hydrologist
U. S. Geological Survey
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Elizabeth
Fellows
Director, Assessment and Watershed Protection Division
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency
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