Presentation given by Nigel Quinn, HydroEcological Engineering Advanced Decision Support, Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, at the 2011 Cybera Summit / Sensor Web Enablement Workshop.

1. Integration of sensor networks and decision
support tools for basin-scale,
real-time water quality management
Nigel W.T. Quinn PhD, P.E., DWRE
HydroEcological Engineering Advanced Decision Support
Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720
Division of Planning, US Bureau of Reclamation
Sacramento, CA 95825
CYBERA GeoSpatial/Open Data Conference
Banff Centre, Banff, CANADA
October 6-8 2011

3. URBAN
WETLANDS
AGRICULTURE

4. SALINITY REGULATION IN WESTERN
SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA
l The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has
adopted an alternative stakeholder-centric approach to salinity
planning and regulation “real-time salinity management”
l Requires dischargers that are otherwise subject to WDR’s to
adopt a “Board approved” real-time salinity management
program
l Program to include monitoring, real-time data access, modeling
and decision support
l High reliance on sensor networks and the development of a
stakeholder supported sensor web
l Compliance date in late 2014

5. EXEMPLAR : SEASONALLY MANAGED WETLANDS IN
THE GRASSLANDS ECOLOGICAL AREA
170,000 acre wetland
footprint within the San
Joaquin Basin

6. DEFINITIONS
ASSIMILATIVE CAPACITY
The mass load of a pollutant that can be safely discharged to a
receiving water without exceeding the water quality objective or
standard for that pollutant.
REAL-TIME WATER QUALITY
MANAGEMENT
A coordinated and cooperative set of actions based on real-time
forecasts of river water quality to consistently meet water quality
objectives

8. COMPARISON OF WEB-BASED SENSOR
NETWORK TECHNOLOGIES
1. Web-based sensor network using Campbell Scientific
Loggernet software and Real-Time Data Management
(RTDM) toolbox
2. Web-based sensor data access and reporting using YSI-
Econet and Aquatic Informatics Aquarius software
3. Integrated web-based sensor data access, QA data
processing and reporting using Kisters WISKI software
APPLICATION TO SEASONALLY
MANAGED WETLANDS

9. WEB-BASED SENSOR NETWORK USING CSI
LOGGERNET AND RTDM TOOLS

10. WEB-BASED SENSOR NETWORK USING
CSI LOGGERNET AND RTDM TOOLS
ADVANTAGES
• Capable of being customized to the application
• Robust and easy to troubleshoot
DISADVANTAGES
• Difficult to integrate cellular, GOES and land line telemetry
• Time consuming to operate and troubleshoot even with automation
offered in LoggerNet
• Graphics from RTDM application stored daily as permanent jpeg or
gif images – very storage intensive
• Wetland biologists reluctant to spend time indoors doing data
processing or system troubleshooting
• Lag in data processing compromised effectiveness for RTDM

11. MONITORING

12. FLOW AND WATER QUALITY FORECASTING

13. YSI-ECONET SENSOR WEB
TOPOLOGY FOR WETLAND MONITORING
!

14. WEB-BASED SENSOR DATA ACCESS
USING YSI-ECONET
ADVANTAGES
• Simple to install and become operational
• Ability to restrict data access on public website to QA censored data
• Web site customizable for display of sensor parameters, graphic
visualization formats and backdrop GIS station maps
• Rapid tech transfer among wetland community – new paradigm
DISADVANTAGES
• Cannot download directly from either access or data nodes in network
• Lack of integration with QA software
• Difficult to overwrite preliminary data with QA-censored data
• Inability to mix and match other telemetered data logging hardware
• Excellent for small networks but expensive scale up to enterprise level

17. DATA QUALITY ASSURANCE :
DATA VALIDATION AND CORRECTION
l Need to automatically flag suspect data and identify :
– Outliers
– Unusual rate of change
– Poor correlation with past or adjacent sensor time series
l Visual flagging allows to quickly spot problems
l Corrections should be performed either visually or numerically
l Tracking and annotation of all corrections and changes
l Original data must be retained

18. AQUARIUS DATA QA OBJECT MODEL
DATA PROCESSING WHITEBOARD

19. FEATURES OF AQUARIUS SOFTWARE
FOR REAL-TIME DATA PROCESSING
l Over 30 toolboxes for most signal processing functions
l Whiteboard concept allows users to easily build their own workflows
l Simple drag and drop interface
l Single-click visualization of data at any stage in workflow
l Whiteboards can be saved for re-use, and can be run automatically
l Not well integrated with sensor web for data downloading and QA
data uploading to website
l Excellent software help files, user online tutorials, case study
examples

20. AQUARIUS FOR CONTINUOUS WEB-BASED
DATA QA AND ERROR CORRECTING

21. FEATURES OF WISKI TOOLBOX FOR
REAL-TIME DATA MANAGEMENT
ADVANTAGES
• Fully integrated toolbox combining data downloading, data processing,
data dissemination and modeling support
• Installed user base within irrigation water district community and USFWS
(Alaska)
• Local presence within Northern California for user support and training
• Robust system capable of handling thousands of network data nodes
• Ability to perform low-cost SCADA control functions
DISADVANTAGES
• Increased software functionality requires commitment for effective use
• Significant effort required to access data from existing YSI-Econet system

22. AUTOMATED DRIFT CORRECTION OF
REAL-TIME DATA IN WISKI
Manual Readings

23. REVIEWING QA INFORMATION FOR
REAL-TIME DATA IN WISKI
CONTROL BARS FOR GRAPHICAL REVIEW OF DATA QUALITY AND
COMMENTS

24. SETTING VALIDATION RULES FOR
REAL-TIME DATA IN WISKI

25. STANDARDISATION OF INTEROPERABILITY
PROTOCOLS TO ENHANCE DATA SHARING
Data Integration with WISKI Web Services WISKI user can access SOS
Water ML2 Services and load
KITSM – scalable multi-tier data into the WISKI database
Time Series
Data
Metadata architecture to to organize,
compute and share time series Downloaded data can be
data included in further
calculations (agents) and
KiTSM
analysis (statistics/ operations)
KiWIS
SOS/ Data Consumer
WaterML2
Class Framework
One API which combines several
interoperability standards – allows
wetland data to be brought into Cloud

26. NEXT STEP : IMPLEMENTATION OF
WISKI WEB SERVICES INTERFACE
WEB PRO for Intranet WEB PUBLIC for Internet
Data copied from
screen or direct
downloaded
Display salinity concentration
exceedence levels
Utilizes graphical user
interface to access data

27. FLOW AND WATER QUALITY SIMULATION MODELING – WARMF-SJR
n

28. HUMAN FACTORS IN WETLAND REAL-TIME
SALINITY MANAGEMENT ADOPTION
l Recognize institutional constraints of participating stakeholders :
Federal and State agencies have autonomy over their decisions :
water districts and private wetlands answer to their Boards
l Private entities that are not as well funded as State and Federal
agencies. Incentive programs could be combined with existing
habitat programs as agents of change.
l Collaborations with regulators to develop interim salt load
targets - creating a transition period for wetland management to
learn by doing and improve drainage salt load scheduling
incrementally (adaptively)

29. ADAPTIVELY MANAGING WETLAND
REAL-TIME MANAGEMENT INVESTMENTS
l Adaptive management dictates a feedback mechanism to prevent
irreversible damage to wetland resource through real-time salinity
management while promoting and sharing successful outcomes
l Learning by doing develops experiential knowledge base that can
guide future actions and operations. This is necessarily a long-term
strategy give the inter-annual variability of climate and water supply
allocations. Provides hedge against uncertainty.
l By its nature a long-term planning strategy – 10 to 15 year planning
horizon for technology transfer and institutional adoption.
l Need to plan for long term financing of essential components such
as enhanced data sharing and management technologies.

30. INSTITUTIONAL ASSURANCES TO
INCREASE PACE OF ADOPTION
l California has well-financed stakeholder interest lobbies - impossible to
satisfy all stakeholder interests. Every information management and
decision support system is, by nature, compromised at the design phase
l Assurances necessary to reduce perceived risk of adoption – otherwise
easier to employ litigation to avoid change
l Assurances can only be given by statutory bodies with institutional clout
to make long-term promises
l Assurances need to be backed up with data collection to better understand
long-term trends – otherwise no proof of harm
l Needs to be understood that system impacts can take years to develop -
though physically reversible may be difficult to remedy institutionally

31. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
l Real-time water quality (salinity) management allows greater salt export
than traditional load-based TMDL’s.
l For seasonally managed wetlands RTSM is the only long-term option if
waterfowl habitat is to be sustained
l RTSM will require integration of data acquisition, processing, model
forecasting, information dissemination and decision support
l Technical progression in capability of sensors and supporting software
over past decade essential for implementation of RTSM
l Full TMDL compliance required by 2014 – major challenge for
cooperative data sharing and coordination of actions between
agriculture, wetland interests, municipal and industrial stakeholders