Integrated Water Resources Science and Services
The Integrated Water Resources Science and Services (IWRSS) is a consortium of federal agencies with complementary missions in water science, observation, management, prediction, and response to water hazards.
The overarching objective of IWRSS is to enable collaboration as IWRSS members seek to adapt to a changing world and the ever-increasing demands place upon our water supply. This means pursuing and demonstrating broad, integrative national water resources information services that provide a reliable and authoritative means for adaptive water-related planning, operations, preparedness, and response activities.
Members
The members of IWRSS are the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the Bureau of Reclamation, and the USGS.
Focus themes
Flood risk reduction, responding to droughts, and managing water-related risks to ecosystems, infrastructure, people, and property are some of the most significant challenges facing societies and governments in the 21st century. Decision makers in all sectors of water resources require new and more integrated information and services to adapt to uncertainty, climate and land-use changes, and increasing demand on limited resources. To meet these challenges, IWRSS members have entered into the innovative IWRSS partnership, bringing to bear their complementary operational missions in water science, observation, prediction, assessment, management, and in the social sciences and risk management.
Together, the IWRSS partners are focusing on the following three themes where each agency can bring its unique strengths together to solve complex water resources issues for future generations.
Theme 1: Data interoperability and sharing
A major goal of IWRSS is to improve system interoperability and data synchronization to expand and enable more timely communication of water information necessary to achieve a common operating picture during floods and droughts.
Some historical successes include sharing computer program configurations and gage calibration information. The IWRSS continues to explore data exchange gaps between IWRSS partners, including where integration of common information across interagency systems is possible and would benefit data exchange and dissemination in the protection of life and property.
IWRSS-inspired USGS products
The USGS National Water Dashboard is a centerpiece of this theme by bringing together NOAA weather and forecast information with USGS water data for a unified real-time assessment of the Nation's water resources.
Theme 2: Modeling and mapping
The IWRSS partners continue to work to improve water modeling. Models help decision makers manage the increasingly limited fresh water supply and better mitigate the impacts of floods and droughts.
Potential new directions for improving modeling could include a national bathymetry repository and a national reservoir operations portal as a data source for operational models.
Similarly, IWRSS partners continue to work to improve mapping. IWRSS partners are coordinating flood inundation mapping activities to show the forecasted spatial extent and depth of flooding. This information is used by emergency managers and other decision makers to pre-position people and resources to mitigate the impacts of floods and build more resilient communities more effectively.
IWRSS-inspired USGS products
Flood inundation mapping includes a wide range of mapping products. For example, the USGS is creating and curating high-accuracy hydraulic-based flood inundation map products, made public via the USGS Flood Inundation Mapper. Each of the IWRSS partners generates inundation mappers specific to their missions. The National Weather Service has been tasked with integrating these efforts into a national dynamic inundation product.
Theme 3: Risk analysis
Multiple federal agencies have equities, authorities, and allocations within the hydrologic hazard identification and mapping space; however, no agency has clear authorities for assessing the impacts of these hazards. For example, the FEMA Risk MAP Program has limited authorities and authorizations to support flood and flood-associated hazard risk assessment in support of the National Flood Insurance Program.
Across the federal government, academic, and private sector, multiple entities are measuring impacts from hydrologic events (from floods to droughts). Some groups are only interested in the count of buildings within a given area affected by flooding, while others are interested in either total economic impact to a region or building specific annualized losses. Currently, there is no formal coordination agreement regarding risk assessment roles and responsibilities between federal agency partners.
Potential future risk analysis activities include:
- Identifying and cataloging all hydrologic hazard risk assessment tools and products
- Performing a capabilities assessment on each tool
Longer term, IWRSS partners continue with the task of ensuring agency and programmatic alignment with hydrologic hazard risk assessment and generating a long-term vision for a federal hydrologic hazard risk assessment framework for all types of hydrologic events across all landscapes.
Governance
The IWRSS partnership is led by a governance board of agency leaders that usually meet on a quarterly schedule. A group of agency specialists implement the approved goals and strategic vision as set forth by the governance board. These specialists typically meet on a monthly basis.