A Provenance Model for Real-Time Water Information Systems

Abstract

Generating hydrological data products, such as flow forecasts, involves complex interactions among instruments, data simulation models, computational facilities and data providers. Correct interpretation of the data produced at various stages requires good understanding of how data was generated or processed. Provenance describes the lineage of a data product. Making provenance information accessible to hydrologists and decision makers not only helps to determine the data's value, accuracy and authorship, but also enables users to determine the trustworthiness of the data product. In the water domain, WaterML2 [1] is an emerging standard which describes an information model and format for the publication of water observations data in XML. The W3C semantic sensor network incubator group (SSN-XG) [3] is producing ontologies for the description of sensor configurations. By integrating domain knowledge of this kind into the provenance information model, the integrated information model will enable water domain researchers and water resource managers to better analyse how observations and derived data products were generated. We first introduce the Proof Mark Language (PML2) [2], WaterML2 and the SSN-XG sensor ontology as the proposed provenance representation formalism. Then we describe some initial implementations how these standards could be integrated to represent the lineage of water information products. Finally we will highlight how the provenance model for a distributed real-time water information system assists the interpretation of the data product and establishing trust. Reference [1] Taylor, P., Walker, G., Valentine, D., Cox, Simon: WaterML2.0: Harmonising standards for water observation data. Geophysical Research Abstracts. Vol. 12. [2] da Silva, P.P., McGuinness, D.L., Fikes, R.: A proof markup language for semantic web services. Inf. Syst. 31(4) (2006), 381-395. [3] W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/charter Acknowledgement The Tasmanian ICT Centre is jointly funded by the Australian Government through the Intelligent Island Program and CSIRO. The Intelligent Island Program is administered by the Tasmanian Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts.