About WaDE

The WaDE Program is committed to assisting WSWC member states in publicly sharing water rights, allocation, supply, and use data through a common streamlined and standardized service that enables regional analyses to inform water resources planning and policies.

Early History

Whether addressing population growth, national security, drought, climate change, or meeting our growing energy needs, questions surrounding water availability in the West will only increase and become more important in the coming years. To address this growing concern, the Western States Water Council (WSWC), began a cooperative effort to address a need for greater access to information from state water agencies with the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the DOE National Labs (led by the Sandia National Lab), and the Western Federal Agency Support Team (WestFAST). Called the Regional Transmission and Energy Planning study, or RTEP for short, the team developed methods and techniques to estimate current and future regional water availability and water demands. The results were also incorporated into models for long-range energy transmission planning used by the Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

 

The results of the study published by Sandia, Energy and Water in the Western and Texas Interconnects, highlighted the difficulty accessing and creating comparable metrics from state water agency data related to water administration and planning. To address this difficulty, and to create a framework where states could share data with each other and the public in a more streamlined way, the WSWC initiated the Water Data Exchange or WaDE program. The WaDE program seeks to provide better access to water allocation, supply, and demand data that are maintained by state and other governmental agencies by standardizing vocabularies and data schemas, and then unifying the effort through a data discovery portal. Through collaboration with WestFAST, the WSWC will also work with the various federal agencies that comprise WestFAST to develop standard methods for accessing federal data that support state-federal planning efforts and are important components to water supply estimates.

WaDE Goals

 

  • Assess and work to address water data gaps and challenges with our members, bringing a regional perspective to the table.

  • Provide a framework for showing existing data, while addressing those gaps (e.g., making recommendations for spatial/temporal adjustments that would help regionally)

  • Develop and maintain a framework for states to share their data, including a Central Catalog of datasets and a discovery portal.

  • Assist with finding resources for WaDE implementation, provide guidance and assistance through all phases of WaDE deployment.

  • Work with federal agencies and others to encourage sharing of important datasets in machine-readable, interoperable, and standardized formats.

  • Provide advocacy and outreach for “open water data” principles. Work with others who are interested in sharing environmental resource datasets.

    Your Title Goes Here

    Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

    Click Here

    Contact US

    The WaDE Program is part of the Western States Water Council.  If you have questions, contact the Program Manager

    Western States Water Council Office

    682 East Vine Street, Suite 7
    Murray, UT 84107-5501

    jgroat@wswc.utah.gov

    Julie Groat
    Administrative Assistant

    Adel Abdallah

    Adel Abdallah

    WaDE Program Manager

    Ryan James

    Ryan James

    Data Analyst / Hydroinformatics Specialist