Information modelling in water resources: an Australian perspective

In water resources there is an increasing demand for interoperable data and information systems to provide people and software agents seamless access to multiple relevant data sources. Information and data modelling, with associated standards, controlled vocabularies and ontologies provide the key components in overcoming the syntactic and semantic challenges of interoperability. When combined with metadata registries and data services these components allow users to search and find data and information through structured approaches, and to access and obtain these for a range of end uses. This paper describes the concepts and fundamental components required for successful use of information modelling, including the work in Australia led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Bureau of Meteorology to develop and apply information modelling to the problems of interoperability for Australian water resources information systems. These initiatives are delivering tools and methods that support the long term maintenance of information models as they evolve to meet new needs and expanded requirements. The investigation reveals that we have a strong conceptual framework along with rapidly maturing methods and tools, suggesting that we are at the forefront of a new generation of water resources data and information access and interoperability.