Research Articles by Alexander Kmoch
Enabling global exchange of groundwater data: GroundWaterML2 (GWML2)
GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the... more GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the problem of data heterogeneity. This problem makes groundwater data hard to find and use because the data are diversely structured and fragmented into numerous data silos. Overcoming data heterogeneity requires a common data format; however, until the development of GWML2, an appropriate international standard has been lacking. GWML2 represents key hydrogeological entities such as aquifers and water wells, as well as related measurements and groundwater flows. It is developed and tested by an international consortium of groundwater data providers from North America, Europe, and Australasia, and facilitates many forms of data exchange, information representation, and the development of online web portals and tools.
We analyzed the corpus of three geoscientific journals to investigate if there are enough locatio... more We analyzed the corpus of three geoscientific journals to investigate if there are enough locational references in research articles to apply a geographical search method, such as the example of New Zealand. Based on all available abstracts and all freely available papers of the " New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics " , the " New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research " , and the " Journal of Hydrology, New Zealand " , we searched title, abstracts, and full texts for place name occurrences that match records from the official Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) gazetteer. We generated ISO standard compliant metadata records for each article including the spatial references and made them available in a public catalogue service. This catalogue can be queried for articles based on authors, titles, keywords, topics, and spatial reference. We visualize the results in a map to show which area the research articles are about, and how much and how densely geographic space is described through these geoscientific research articles by mapping mentioned place names by their geographic locations. We outlined the methodology and technical framework for the geo-referencing of the journal articles and the platform design for this knowledge inventory. The results indicate that the use of well-crafted abstracts for journal articles with carefully chosen place names of relevance for the article provides a guideline for geographically referencing unstructured information like journal articles and reports in order to make such resources discoverable through geographical queries. Lastly, this approach can actively support integrated holistic assessment of water resources and support decision making.
The future information needs of stakeholders for hydrogeological and hydro-climate data managemen... more The future information needs of stakeholders for hydrogeological and hydro-climate data management and assessment in New Zealand may be met with an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards-compliant publicly accessible web services framework which aims to provide integrated use of groundwater information and environmental observation data in general. The stages of the framework development described in this article are search and discovery as well as data collection and access with (meta)data services, which are developed in a community process. The concept and prototype implementation of OGC-compliant web services for groundwater and hydro-climate data include demonstration data services that present multiple distributed datasets of environmental observations. The results also iterate over the stakeholder community process and the refined profile of OGC services for environmental observation data sharing within the New Zealand Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) landscape, including datasets from the National Groundwater Monitoring Program and the New Zealand Climate Database along with datasets from affiliated regional councils at regional- and sub-regional scales. With the definition of the New Zealand observation data profile we show that current state-of-the-art standards do not necessarily need to be improved, but that the community has to agree upon how to use these standards in an iterative process.
New Zealand's groundwater resources are inadequately understood to effectively support an integra... more New Zealand's groundwater resources are inadequately understood to effectively support an integrated and sustainable freshwater management. To appropriately characterise the groundwater aquifers, a lot of environmental data are required; among them (hydro- )geological datasets. Usually, proprietary software products are used to establish, visualise and analyse the geological underground. This prevents a broad and public distribution of information to those who need it. In this manuscript we demonstrate a framework to enable a web-based (platform independent) retrieval and visualisation of three-dimensional information via the web browser. We link distributed data and processing services to prepare an on-demand 3D visualisation of geological and hydrological data.
Extreme weather events are likely to increase in the future, and thus damage to the environment a... more Extreme weather events are likely to increase in the future, and thus damage to the environment and infrastructure will likely increase during this time, too. To adapt to these weather impacts, forecasting, now-casting, and in situ monitoring installations have increased during the last years. Even though monitoring stations deliver frequent measurements in realtime, a dynamic implementation of measurement frequencies, adapted to certain environmental conditions, are rarely implemented. Within this paper we provide a framework where low frequency phosphorus measurements in the Mondsee catchment can be adapted to high frequency measurements during storm events. When heavy rainfall is observed, a threshold event triggers a reconfiguration task for the phosphorus measurement device, using asynchronous, push-based communication. A Sensor Planning Service commits such a request into the wireless sensor network, and updates the measurement frequency of the target nodes to enable nutrient peak flow estimation during storm events. This setup introduces the possibility of measurements in flooded areas without using traditional (manual) sampling methods, and we expect to obtain a better understanding of discharge to phosphorus runoff relations.
Within the last decades tremendous progress has been made in analysing, characterising and unders... more Within the last decades tremendous progress has been made in analysing, characterising and understanding the processes, functions, and structures of the environment. Numerous indicators have been proposed and operationalised using computing techniques. However, many of the approaches are based on specific case study areas and the transfer of approaches is hampered due to incompatible data formats, data availability limitations, and/or unavailable modelling routines. Information on modelling routines, existing result datasets, and updates of previously derived analyses are missing. Considering the recent technological and methodological developments, environmental modelling providing indicators for decision support is likely to change in the next decade. This research provides a heuristic conceptual basis for driving the next generation of real-time multi-purpose data assembling, evaluating, modelling, and visualisation towards the operationalisation of decisions. Turning field observations into useful (near) real-time decision support information is demonstrated based on a hydrological example of future Integrated Water Resources Management. This paper describes new ways of near real-time indicator processing using Wireless Sensor Networks and standardised web services. Publicly available and standardised environmental information as Open Geospatial Consortium compliant Sensor Observation Services with its data formats Observations {\&} Measurements and Water Markup Language 2.0 automatically feed into Web Processing Services for timely information delivery, discovery and access of the spatially explicit environmental conditions as pull and push based web services accompanied with notification for immediate actions in crisis times.
Transboundary and cross-catchment access to hydrological data is the key to designing successful ... more Transboundary and cross-catchment access to hydrological data is the key to designing successful environmental policies and activities. Electronic maps based on distributed databases are fundamental for planning and decision making in all regions and for all spatial and temporal scales. Freshwater is an essential asset in New Zealand (and globally) and the availability as well as accessibility of hydrological information held by or held for public authorities and businesses are becoming a crucial management factor. Access to and visual representation of environmental information for the public is essential for attracting greater awareness of water quality and quantity matters. Detailed interdisciplinary knowledge about the environment is required to ensure that the environmental policy-making community of New Zealand considers regional and local differences of hydrological statuses, while assessing the overall national situation. However, cross-regional and inter-agency sharing of environmental spatial data is complex and challenging. In this article, we firstly provide an overview of the state of the art standard compliant techniques and methodologies for the practical implementation of simple, measurable, achievable, repeatable, and time-based (SMART) hydrological data management principles. Secondly, we contrast international state of the art data management developments with the present status for groundwater information in New Zealand. Finally, for the topics (i) data access and harmonisation, (ii) sensor web enablement and (iii) metadata, we summarise our findings, provide recommendations on future developments and highlight the specific advantages resulting from a seamless view, discovery, access, and analysis of interoperable hydrological information and metadata for decision making.
Conference Proceedings by Alexander Kmoch
Integrating Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and spatial data web services is becoming common in e... more Integrating Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and spatial data web services is becoming common in ecological applications. However,
WSNs were developed in application domains with different sensor and user types, and often with their own low-level metadata semantics,
data format and communication protocols. The sensor web enablement initiative (SWE) within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has
released a set of open standards for interoperable interface specifications and (meta) data encodings for the real time integration of sensors
and sensor networks into a web services architecture. Such XML-based web services exhibit disadvantages in terms of payload and
connectivity in low-bandwidth low energy unreliable networks, such as remote 3G uplinks. Monitoring stations deliver frequent
measurements in real-time, but dynamic implementation of measurement frequencies, adapted to certain environmental conditions, are
rarely implemented. Within this paper we describe a responsive integrated hydrological monitoring setup to calculate rainfall recharge for
water management purposes. When rainfall is observed, a threshold event triggers a reconfiguration task for the soil moisture sensors, using
asynchronous, push-based communication implemented with an MQTT queue. A Sensor Planning Service commits that request via MQTT
into the wireless sensor network, and updates the measurement frequency of the target sensors to gain higher resolution for the vertical soil
water infiltration. The system integrates a Sensor Observation Service (SOS) including field observations and internet-based environmental
data with a rainfall recharge model that allows near-real time calculation of rainfall recharge in the Upper Rangitaiki catchment, Bay of
Plenty region in New Zealand.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) integrated with web services are becoming common in widespread ap... more Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) integrated with web services are becoming common in widespread applications across the world. WSNs are developed in different application domains of sensor and user types, with each typically relying on its own metadata semantics, data format and software. There is a high demand for standardising access to sensor data via internet without having to use some complex and unknown protocol. Thus, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one of the key paradigms that enables the deployment of services at large-scale over the internet domain and its integration with WSNs could open new pathways for novel applications and research. The sensor web enablement initiative (SWE) within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has released a set of open standards for interoperable interface specifications and (meta) data encodings for the real time integration of sensors and sensor networks into a web services architecture. This paper describes integration of WSNs into a SOA by proposing a web service proxy linkage of the low level sensor platform to the high level SWE sensorweb architecture to treat sensors in an interoperable, platform-independent and uniform way.
New Zealand has 16 regional councils responsible for freshwater management working under a common... more New Zealand has 16 regional councils responsible for freshwater management working under a common national legal framework. However, management of water quality, water consents and water quantity measurement is a regional responsibility and so is data collection and storage. In order to provide a seamless spatial view of collected groundwater related datasets, regional
councils have been visited and stakeholders involved in
workshops. Basic cross-regional hydro(geo)logical
datasets have been identified and
harmonised according to OGC and ISO compliant standards. This is the basis for the data portal and attached three-dimensional web visualisation tool outlined here.
inproceedings by Alexander Kmoch
A SMART Groundwater Portal: Towards a user centred knowledge inventory for information search, discovery, access and visualisation
In the past decade, groundwater resource (over-) exploitation through agriculture and business ha... more In the past decade, groundwater resource (over-) exploitation through agriculture and business has become increasingly noticed in New Zealand (Ministry for the Environment, 2006). As a result, water quantity and quality changes have created environmental conditions that are inappropriate for sustainable development. Continuing exploitation increase has an expected increasing impact on many hydrological ecosystems and a resultant pressure on the availability of these resources for reliant businesses. However, ...
A Māori–English thesaurus for a New Zealand groundwater resources portal
Assessment of groundwater table measurements via remote sensing and in-situ observations
Unififed hydro-climate Data Search across New Zealand
Web-based multi-dimensional Data Visualisation Techniques for Hydrogeology
Geospatial web enablement for the characterisation of New Zealand's aquifers
Development of a New Zealand Hydrology Time Series Data Exchange Standard
To best understand our waterways we must integrate and analyse data from water monitoring station... more To best understand our waterways we must integrate and analyse data from water monitoring stations managed by a number parties. These stations generate sufficient quantities of data that the most efficient way to process them is with use of automated data capture, distribution and modelling techniques. To achieve this we require the consistent and unambiguous exchange of data through a disciplined, well organized and widely adopted approach to the delivery of data. At present water monitoring data are not readily integrated as they are distributed across agencies, and structured and/or formatted differently – each aspect governed by the sensor hardware and/or the software used to manage the results. Reconciling data across these locations and platforms is a costly and time consuming process so the adoption of data exchange standards by the community of data providers – where each externally exposes their data in the same way – is an important way of minimising this cost. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) offers a relevant suite of standards: the Web Feature Service (WFS) and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) interfaces govern web communication protocols, while the Observations and Measurements and WaterML 2 data exchange standards govern data structure. However, even these standards can be ambiguous – offering choices for content and encoding that may be interpreted differently by providers – meaning data may still not be provided in a consistent way. For example, in WaterML 2 the time-series of data from a water monitoring station may be organised as time value pairs or using a domain range structure (Taylor, 2014). We have developed a refined specification for the use of OGC standards to provide hydrology data (the OGC uses the term ‘Profile' for a set of restrictions on existing standards). The New Zealand Environmental Observation Data Profile (EODP) provides clear guidance as the choices that should be made or anticipated by the implementers and users of compliant web services. The EODP is written as a modular specification. The Hydrology WaterML 2 Profile is an extension of a Core Profile that specifies universal constraints on the behaviour of environmental observation data services (in future there will be extensions for other domains, for example soil or bio-data observations). This Core Profile also defines a discovery service that acts as a multidomain index of sampling stations that can be queried to discover observations of a particular phenomenon in a given spatiotemporal location. WFS and SOS services conforming to the EODP have been deployed and are being tested. The example discovery WFS has been successfully accessed and displayed by a time series data management software package. Participating agencies will now work to ensure their operational services conform to the specification, providing a consistent network of hydrology data services. Users can then focus more effort on analysis and less on data acquisition.
Integrating spatio-temporal Measurments and environmental Modelling with a low cost hydro-climate Sensor Network for Real-Time Measurements
From sensor measurement to standardised data distribution
To measure environmental variables, wireless energy autarchic sensor networks are becoming more a... more To measure environmental variables, wireless energy autarchic sensor networks are becoming more and more important. We discuss a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based on a star network (Figure 1) configuration. We developed a custom board to fit a Libelium WaspMote 1.1 ZigBee board which integrates multiple DS18S20 1-Wire Parasite-Power Digital Thermometers. The WaspMote transmits temperature measurements and the time to a central gateway. The gateway (either a computer or a Libelium Meshlium) receives the measurements and stores them in a MySQL database (Figure 2). We used a fixed predefined configuration of sensors. Thus, we do not implement a plug-and play capturing infrastructure. As the intermediary link (SOS connector) between a client and an observation repository or near real-time sensor channel we use the Sensor Observation Service (v2.0, OGC (2012a)) interface for requesting, filtering, and retrieving observations and sensor system information. We applymature the existing set of Sensor Web Enablement Standards (SWE, OGC (2011b), Botts et al. (2008)) interfaces to enable the interoperable orchestration of sensors, platforms and management infrastructure into a Wireless Sensor Networksingle sensor initiative .. To define the geometric, dynamic, and observational characteristics of sensors and sensor systems we use SensorML (OGC, 2007b). For the representation of hydrological observations data with a specific focus on time series structures WaterML (v2.0, OGC (2012b)) is used in connection with the Observations {\&} Measurements (v.2.0; OGC (2011a)) standard as it is an essential dependency for the SOS2.0 . This integrated setup enables us to facilitate real-time environmental modelling using Web Processing Services (WPS, OGC (2007a)) within the OpenMI inititative (The OpenMI Association Technical Committee (2010), Castronova et al. (2013), Knapen et al. (2013)) .
Bridging Domains: A web-enabled interoperable Groundwater Research Framework
Geocomputation solves domain specific, narrowly defined problems with spatial context. It require... more Geocomputation solves domain specific, narrowly defined problems with spatial context. It requires meaningful and compliant input data in well-defined formats and encodings. In contrast, available geo-spatial, geoscientific and environmental observation data are stored in various generic formats or have been specifically compiled for limited purposes only. A common challenge is to fit available input data correctly into required formats for specific geocomputation or geoprocessing algorithms as well as to make the results available again as inputs for subsequent analyses or presentation. Data pre- and post-processing is disjunctive from the execution of the computation. Traditionally the task of pre-processing input data and post-processing the results is a manual procedure conducted by the user, e.g. the researcher. Present research in hydrogeology and freshwater resources management can be significantly supported and accelerated by relating, reusing and combining existing datasets, models and simulations in a streamlined, computer-aided and networked fashion and yield more new and reproducible insights. This work examines a networked and open standards-based integration of storing, accessing and transformation of distributed hydro(geo)logical data with domain specific geocomputation processes in the interdisciplinary case study field of groundwater research in New Zealand. A novel method is developed that applies an ontology-aided inference mechanism to a list of available data in predictable formats to prepare appropriate inputs for a selected geocomputation algorithm. The result is also made accessible in the network again in re- usable open-standards format for generic composition of subsequent workflows.
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Research Articles by Alexander Kmoch
Conference Proceedings by Alexander Kmoch
WSNs were developed in application domains with different sensor and user types, and often with their own low-level metadata semantics,
data format and communication protocols. The sensor web enablement initiative (SWE) within the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has
released a set of open standards for interoperable interface specifications and (meta) data encodings for the real time integration of sensors
and sensor networks into a web services architecture. Such XML-based web services exhibit disadvantages in terms of payload and
connectivity in low-bandwidth low energy unreliable networks, such as remote 3G uplinks. Monitoring stations deliver frequent
measurements in real-time, but dynamic implementation of measurement frequencies, adapted to certain environmental conditions, are
rarely implemented. Within this paper we describe a responsive integrated hydrological monitoring setup to calculate rainfall recharge for
water management purposes. When rainfall is observed, a threshold event triggers a reconfiguration task for the soil moisture sensors, using
asynchronous, push-based communication implemented with an MQTT queue. A Sensor Planning Service commits that request via MQTT
into the wireless sensor network, and updates the measurement frequency of the target sensors to gain higher resolution for the vertical soil
water infiltration. The system integrates a Sensor Observation Service (SOS) including field observations and internet-based environmental
data with a rainfall recharge model that allows near-real time calculation of rainfall recharge in the Upper Rangitaiki catchment, Bay of
Plenty region in New Zealand.
councils have been visited and stakeholders involved in
workshops. Basic cross-regional hydro(geo)logical
datasets have been identified and
harmonised according to OGC and ISO compliant standards. This is the basis for the data portal and attached three-dimensional web visualisation tool outlined here.
inproceedings by Alexander Kmoch