Challenges in using scientific workflow tools in the hydrology domain
Michael Wayne Kearney, Peter Fitch, Craig A. Peters, Csiro Ict · 2009
Abstract: Scientific workflow tools are used to perform complex analysis on scientific data. The strength of scientific workflow tools lies in their ability to capture a complex analysis as a sequence of steps using simple components. The components may run on different computers or clusters located at different geographical locations and access data from heterogeneous sources. Scientific workflow tools are popular in specific scientific domains (e.g., ecology, genomics, and astrophysics) for the integration of simulation models. However, this kind of software framework has not been widely embraced by the hydrology domain. Typically hydrologists use a combination of off-the-shelf software systems such as The Invisible Modelling Environment (TIME) or Matlab along with other ad-hoc software to perform integration and to implement the workflow as their environment for hydrology simulations. In a large scale hydrology study, such as the Murray Darling Sustainable Yields undertaken by CSIRO, a substantial fraction of the overall cost is devoted to developing a collection of software tools to implement the processing flow required for the project. Scientific workflow tools offer significant potential to allow this software to be modularised, reused and shared. The process composition can be semi-automated. For an organisation such as the Bureau of Meteorology Water Division, which is responsible for the routine production of data products like a national water account, these tools can provide greatly improved transparency into the method and auditibility of the