Considering the growing importance of water resources issues around the globe, this project addresses the need to train the current and future generations of teachers, students and general public to use cyberinfrastructure (CI) to address water related issues. The overall goal of this project is to develop a prototype CI for data access and sharing, simulation modeling and visualization to address water related issues, and then show that this CI can be used as a platform to train educators, students and the general public. Specifically, this proposal: (i)bis developing WaterHUB (by utilizing Purdue HUBZero platform) to include prototype tools for accessing, analyzing and visualizing water resources geospatial and temporal data; (ii) is developing a prototype framework for collaboration among educators to develop, publish, review and share training material for using cyberinfrastructure to address water issues; (iii) is evaluating and assessing the effectiveness of the proposed cyberinfrastructure and the collaborative framework through application at three universities (Purdue, Arizona State U, Jackson State U); and (iv) is building community through workshops and training sessions for teachers, students, policy makers and the general public. This demonstration project will show proof-of-concept for a scalable mechanism to create water resources awareness among a much broader community by incorporating the needs of a diverse population through collaboration with faculty and students at three geographically and culturally diverse research institutions in the United States. External evaluation and assessment of all aspects of this demonstration project including community input through workshops and training sessions will provide the basis for developing a plan for scaling up the project.

This proposal involves a group of hydrologists, computer scientists, an educational expert and an environmental researcher at three geographically and culturally different institutions (Purdue, Arizona State and Jackson State) to develop a CI for data access, analysis and visualization to study water resources issues including collaboration for teaching and training. Specifically, this proposal will use a proven CI, initially developed for nanotechnology (nanoHUB.org that has more than 100,000 users annually), to develop a customized cyber environment for water resources called WaterHUB. The core nanohub CI, known as HUBZero, is inadequate to handle large spatial and temporal datasets that are typical in water related studies, and lacks the capability to link such data with data driven, computationally intensive hydrologic simulations. This work will add the much needed data and coupling of data and high performance computing to HUBzero to support water resources studies. WaterHUB will be the first of its kind in the water resources community that will provide a collaborative web-based platform for research and education at all levels including P-12. The prototype WaterHUB is being developed to address three basic questions related to water storage, human impacts and energy fluxes by using public domain data and simulation models to address water related problems. This project also involves a comprehensive evaluation and assessment plan that will quantify the effect of cyber-enabled pedagogy on students learning. This assessment is critical in terms of evaluating the attributes of existing and future CI to meet the needs of next generation cyber learners and researchers.

The proposed WaterHUB is providing the much needed cyber environment to train and educate the current and next generation of citizens on water related issues. The activities will specifically target: (i) P-12 teachers and students through collaboration with Purdue?s INSPIRE institute; (ii) undergraduate and graduate students at three research universities; (iii) state and federal decision makers in the state of Indiana. Through collaboration with Jackson State and Arizona State universities, under-represented students are being trained through workshops and summer internships to use the latest cyber technology for exploring water related issues. In addition, workshop gatherings will be used to develop a strategy for up-scaling this effort to include more computational tools, national and international datasets and high quality curriculum material. WaterHUB?s cyber environment to develop collaborative teaching material will enable training of teachers and students at places that have inadequate resources to develop new curriculum material for adopting cyber technology to tackle water related issues.