Visualising Victoria’s Groundwater

Visualising Victoria’s Groundwater (VVG) is an innovative technology offering a real-time, centralised site for Victoria’s ground water information, a resource normally invisible to the public. VVG consolidates data from over 400,000 bores from four authoritative sources together with Victorian aquifer information with features that include spatial visualisations, hydrogeological models and historical records and maps. In 2018, an updated and modernised VVG portal was launched offering extensive new functionality and content.
 

VVG website

Background

VVG was launched in July 2012 offering an intraoperative spatial information portal that federates groundwater data from disparate sources. Until the project’s commencement, information about Victoria’s groundwater data was difficult to locate and was stored in various databases with only a fraction of the information available online.

Using the interoperable technologies and high-speed broadband CeRDI was able to successfully capture, aggregate and spatially depict Victoria's groundwater systems within one comprehensive and publicly accessible web portal. This ease of access and exploration of Victoria’s groundwater data allows VVG to be readily adopted by water users, resource managers, landowners, and conservation groups to inform their decisions about managing consumptive water use and environmental water flows.

VVG won wide acclaim from the technology and science industries culminating in several awards, and publications of note, for the industry. The success of the VVG project has also led to collaboration with Open Geospatial Consortium on the development and trialling of international standards in the ground water mark-up language GWML2.

During 2018 an updated and modernised Visualising Victoria’s Groundwater (VVG) portal was developed. It was officially launched in April at a meeting of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (Victorian Chapter) by CeRDI’s Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus.

VVG map portal

Outcomes

Principal research fellow Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus and the CeRDI team have worked extensively on developing the new portal and expanding its usability and functionality. Significant upgrades include an online library of resources / e-Library  (pictured below), a spatial map interface  (pictured above), and a data download catalogue  (pictured below).

VVG - e Library		VVG - Data Catalogue

Innovation

The latest VVG portal was created as an ongoing experiment in data democracy. It helps provide the evidential basis for community debates around the groundwater impacts of energy resource developments, urbanisation, and changing climates.

The portal has been increasingly used by the groundwater industry professionals, government agencies, researchers, and the public.

CeRDI was a participant in the interoperability experiment as part of the development of the Groundwater Mark-up Language version 2 (GroundWaterML2) initiated by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). As a testbed for the official OGC interoperability experiment, CeRDI worked closely with other participants to ensure the standard was implementation ready.

The web-based 3D Visualisation component of the VVG portal was developed in collaboration with the Groundwater Visualisation team at QUT. The system was able to deliver the 3D rendering power of the GVS desktop system via a web browser for the first time. Newly available browser technology (HTML5 web-sockets) was used to allow the user to interact with the remote 3D server which was able to stream the 3D scene in real-time.

Technical Features

Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) has been developed and deployed to federate groundwater data from disparate database sources into a single web portal thereby making data more easily discoverable.

In collaboration with the project partners and stakeholders, the VVG portal was designed to include the following features:

• user requests will be fulfilled via real-time access to remote databases by integrating the interoperable web services they each provide;
• the data resides with the data managers (ensuring currency and validity);
• it has a spatial map function that is intuitive to use (similar to Google Maps);
• all forms of data are included – vector, raster, text, and multimedia;
• data downloads are allowed (subject to data custodian's consent);
• spatial data entities link to the original source documents and images;
• it is capable of dynamically synthesising the data;
• interactive 3D visualisations can be created for user-selected scenes;
• users can add, edit, or update data (subject to quality assurance and quality control);
• the spatial data and models are credible to the user.

Approach

VVG has changed both the way consultants in the groundwater industry work, and how the sector provisions data to assist both the private and public sectors.

The Visualising Victoria’s Groundwater (VVG) portal is setting new standards in user access and functionality. Justifiably, it has won numerous industry best practice awards. Its rapidly growing use is a result of its ability to federate a diverse range of data, its ease of accessibility and the quality of the data. The frequency of use and repeat visitation rates testify to its value and it is a tribute to the CeRDI team’s efforts.

MR BRUCE SIMONS, CSIRO.