Authors: Jordan Laser – Lynker
Title: NextGen National Water Model Framework DataStream
Presentation Type: Poster
Abstract: The NextGen National Water Model Framework gives the hydrologic community finely-tuned configuration over orchestrating models. However, the highly configurable nature of the framework implies a plethora of complex input options. This complexity calls for a simple interface to provide a baseline simulation capacity. After exploratory simulations begin to indicate a research direction, creating the input files and managing potentially millions of files associated with each simulation, all of which must be versioned to ensure reproducibility, can be computationally expensive and time consuming if not done efficiently. The complexity of running the NextGen framework for in depth analysis motivates a compact tool that has features like NextGen DataStream. NextGen DataStream automates the process of collecting and formatting input data for NextGen, orchestrating the NextGen run through NextGen In a Box, and handling outputs. This software allows users to run NextGen in an efficient, painless, and reproducible fashion. The Research DataStream is an array of daily NextGen executions in the AWS cloud. An exciting aspect of the Research DataStream is the NextGen configuration is open-sourced and community editable, which allows any member of the community to contribute to improving accuracy. By making the NextGen forcings, outputs, and configuration publicly available, it is now possible to leverage regional expertise and incrementally improve hydrologic prediction with NextGen.