Modeling surface hydrology concepts with endurance and perdurance

Abstract

Integration of GIS and hydrologic models has been a common approach for monitoring our ever-changing hydrologic system. One important issue in adapting such an approach is to ensure the right correspondence of data across databases. To reach this goal, it is necessary to develop a description of the surface hydrology concepts that is internally consistent and semantically rich. In this paper, we apply the notions of endurance and perdurance to model the semantics of hydrologic processes in surface hydrology. Three hydrologic models were examined to identify concepts used in surface hydrology. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of applying the notions of endurance and perdurance to surface hydrology. The result is a set of primitive entities, aggregate entities, and relations between these entities that are necessary to cover surface hydrology concepts. © Springer-Verlag 2004.