HydroSeek

HydroSeek is a search engine for discovering data that is published via WaterOneFlow Web Services. HydroSeek provides integrated federated search capability across multiple data sources (universities and federal agencies) that have WaterOneFlow web services through a single interface. It combines spatial, temporal and thematic aspects of search in order to make it possible to more effectively discover data despite heterogeneity issues among data repositories. It allows data discovery using keywords which improves data browsing capabilities by using a concepts ontology. In short, HydroSeek is designed to provide a one-stop search center in which a user can query for specific data groups across a large data inventory regardless of the storage and description conventions used by the respective warehouses.

More on HydroSeek:

• Launch HydroSeek: Site1 | Site2
• How to Use HydroSeek
• HydroSeek Functional Specification
• HydroSeek Web Services
• Much of the initial work on HydroSeek was done by Bora Beran, as described in his dissertation.

HydroSeek searches for the availability of data as identified by the combination of variable, site and date from multiple data sources, and it simplifies this search by allowing the:

• selection of locations of interest using either a map interface or by entering the numeric latatude/longitude, and
• selection of variable by keyword, using its ontology network viewer/search engine.

The CUAHSI-HIS Controlled Vocabulary and several other service ontologies have been incorporated into the HydroSeek’s keyword network. HydroSeek takes advantage of a number of web technologies including: Web Services, AJAX and OWL. It runs on the CUAHSI-HIS Central Servers and is accessed via a web browser.

How to Use HydroSeek

 

• Launch HydroSeek
  • Use a web browser and go to one of the HydroSeek mirror sites:
    • http://www.hydroseek.org/search/
    • http://www.hydroseek.net/search/
• Search Box
  • Select search box by clicking the small icon next Eastbound Longitude
  • go to upper left of desired box: click AND RELEASE (this Is not click and drag!)
  • select lower right and click again. This is your SEARCH box and HydroSeek will zoom into right away.
• Select Date
  • click the year and use the auto-selection feature, or use any data by directly typing it in. Use this format Mm/dd/yyyy
  • do the same for end date
  • if you leave it blank then it will search all years
• Select Search Concept
  • type Nitr …. And you will see an auto-complete of all things nitrogen you can search for.
  • type Strea … and you can see all things that are possible with "stream"
  • actually try to type some keywords you can think of and see what comes up. Its not all inclusive but there is some good coverage already.
• Navigate
  • You will see some balloons with 123 show up if the zoom level is too coarse. This is because the background application will not allow more than 200 stations to be plotted at the same time. Hence, each of the balloons is a placeholder for several stations it represents.
  • Zoom in rolling your center scroll button forward (zoom out by rolling in opposite direction). At some point the balloons turn into real station icons.
  • on a mouse-over you get a small window telling you what this station is. You can get more detailed information by following the "detail" link.
  • you can select data sets and place in a cart. You can select as many as you want. Your cart will be submitted at the end of the session and the data request will be processed. You will receive an email when it is done (doesn't take very long) with a URL from where to download.