Spring 2022 CEE-6110-001 XL

Hydroinformatics

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USU CEE 6110

Class Time: Tuesday / Thursday 12:00 - 1:15 PM

Class Locations: ENGR 203

Instructor:

Jeff Horsburgh
Utah State University
Offices: ENGR 223 / UWRL 201
Office Hours: Tuesday 1:30 – 2:30 PM and Thursday 11:00 - 11:45 AM in ENGR 223, or by appointment
E-mail: jeff.horsburgh@usu.edu
Phone: 435-797-2946

Syllabus

Access the full PDF version of the course syllabus Download PDF version of the course syllabus. 

Acknowledgments

Support for development of this course in previous years was provided by National Science Foundation Grants No. EPS 1135482 Links to an external site., and EPS 1208732 Links to an external site.. Many of the materials from this course were developed using funding from these projects. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Course Overview

Hydroinformatics is the study, design, development, and deployment of hardware and software systems for hydrologic data collection, distribution, interpretation, and analysis to aid in the understanding and management of water in the natural and built environment. This class will introduce students to fundamental and advanced hydroinformatics concepts and procedures including automated data collection networks, relational databases and data management software, metadata, data storage file formats and standards, data transformations and automation of data manipulation tasks to support modeling and analysis, web based data distribution and access using web services, and integrated networks of hydro-climate data.

The course has an open, project-type format where students will work individually or in a small group over the semester to discover, organize and manage data for a hydrology or water resources problem. Projects may include designing appropriate data models and automating data loading, manipulation, and transformations in support of data intensive analyses or modeling. Class time will include lectures focused on learning and developing data management, transformation, and task automation skills, class discussions, code writing exercises to solve data manipulation tasks, demonstration of software and data systems, and student presentations of their project work. The course will better prepare students to work in data-intensive research and project work environments and emphasizes development of reproducible processes for managing and transforming data in ways that others can easily and completely reproduce on their own to support analyses and modeling.  Additionally, this course will better prepare students to work across multiple software platforms and systems used in data management.

Learning Objectives

Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to:

 Data and the Data Life Cycle:

  1. Describe the data life cycle
  2. Determine the dimensionality of a dataset, including the scale triplet of support, spacing and, extent 
  3. Create basic programs for data collection using dataloggers and environmental sensors
  4. Generate metadata and describe datasets to support data sharing
  5. Discover and access data from major data sources

Databases and Data Models:

  1. Store, retrieve, and use data from important data models used in hydrology
  2. Develop data models to represent, organize, and store data
  3. Design and use relational databases to organize, store, and manipulate data
  4. Query data using Structured Query Language (SQL)

Visualization, Transformations, Analysis, and Modeling:

  1. Create reproducible data visualizations
  2. Write and execute computer code to automate difficult and repetitive data related tasks
  3. Manipulate data and transform it across file systems, flat files, databases, programming languages, etc.
  4. Retrieve and use data from Web services
  5. Organize data in a variety of platforms and systems common in hydrology and engineering

Class Schedule

The class schedule is subject to change.  Please check the Lecture Materials page regularly for updates to the class schedule. Lecture materials and assigned readings are being posted to the Lecture Materials page.

Additional Resources for Students

Please direct further questions or concerns about the syllabus or the course to the instructor by email, in person, or phone.

CC Attribution This course content is offered under a CC Attribution Links to an external site. license. Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted.