The challenge:
To create a collaborative online platform for the open sharing of water and environmental data, to support water management, research, education, innovation and economic diversification.
The Water and Environmental (WE) Hub is a collaborative effort between public and private sectors initially across Alberta but will expand to include adjacent jurisdictions such as BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and the Yukon to leverage and build on existing water knowledge. The WE Hub will bring together divergent interests and encourage dialogue between more than 1,000 water related organizations, enabling users to analyze and model water and environmental impacts and outcomes.
There are four key stages for development of the WE Hub - water community engagement, capacity building, data accessibility and development of analytical and interpretative tools to visualize and utilize water data.
Cybera’s role:
To provide management, technical expertise and access to cyberinfrastructure for the development of the WE Hub.
Building off of previous cloud computing modules Cybera coordinated for an earlier pilot project, Cloud Services for Water Management, the WE Hub will continue to develop data gathering and management techniques for use by the water community.
For example, Cloud Services for Water Management demonstrated how flood and drought monitoring and management tools may be developed. The WE Hub project will build upon these modules to develop set of tools which researchers and members of the general public can use to access data regarding water management, conditions, and events such as a drought or flood.
How this project affects you:
The WE Hub will enable the sharing of ideas, information, data and research tools with Alberta’s water community.
The WE Hub is a unique project as the water community includes users from across Western Canada, at every level of involvement. For example, while a researcher may be concerned with the phosphorous levels in a small waterway, elementary school children will be able to use this data to learn about waterway management. Through the WE Hub portal water and environmental data may be contributed by anyone - researchers, organizations and everyday users.
Investment:
The WE Hub project is valued at $1.758 million.
Western Economic Diversification has contributed $1.5 million
The University of Lethbridge has contributed $120,000
Cybera has contributed $200,000
Partners:
Western Economic Diversification
University of Lethbridge
Alberta WaterPortal
Alberta WaterSMART
Tesera Systems Inc.
Biogeosciences Institute, Grid Research Centre at the University of Calgary
For more information please contact Alex Joseph, Executive Director of the WE Hub, at alex.joseph@cybera.ca or the Cybera team at projects@cybera.ca
