Metadata catalog refreshes one state’s water use insights
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A metadata catalog is helping Arizona water resource managers quickly find and analyze the data needed by water users, planners and decision-makers.
To manage the state’s water supply, the Arizona Department of Water Resources collects, stores and analyzes water location, depth and usage data for over 300,000 wells and natural resources such as lakes, rivers and streams. The data helps the department track use of almost 6 trillion gallons of water by the state’s 7 million residents and its extensive agriculture industry. It is also used in water rights adjudication.
As the state’s population grew and water became a more critical resource, it was essential that staff easily find relevant datasets for its analysis.
A metadata repository solution from Hitachi Vantara, is now helping water resource managers and hydrology staff search and quickly find the data needed by water users, planners and decision-makers. The company’s Pentaho Data Catalog classifies and visualizes relationships, allowing the department to leverage machine learning and automation to recognize different types of structured data, including geospatial information, sensitive court data and historical records.
Machine learning algorithms sampled legacy records and generated accompanying metadata that allowed staff to see the relationships in a centralized, integrated dashboard. With this solution, “the department can now understand, integrate and analyze its unique and critical datasets to meet the needs of Arizona’s water users, planners and decision makers,” Hitachi Vantara officials said in a statement.
The unified metadata catalog has enabled the creation of consistent frameworks and standardized definitions of usage that help water resource managers and application developers leverage transactional databases, data warehouses and document management systems and spatial data to more accurately compile and analyze usage.
“It is saving us so much time,” said Lisa Williams, manager with the Water Resources Department’s office of enterprise data management. “Having a centralized metadata repository enables our staff and consultants to quickly understand that data, and its complete lineage so we know the provenance of the data. It also frees up time for our people to analyze and manage groundwater conditions.”
“With natural water supplies at their lowest levels in decades, having an accurate view of data helps the State of Arizona better protect, conserve and enhance water supplies in a bold, thoughtful and innovative manner,” said Maggie Laird, head of Lumada Software business and corporate sustainability, at Hitachi Vantara.