Towards a sustainable utilization of the global hydrological modelling software WaterGAP

实现全球水文模拟软件 WaterGAP 的可持续利用

• 批准号: 443183317
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Petra Döll
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Ingenieurhydrologie und Wasserwirtschaft
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/443183317?language=en
• 关键词: Towards; sustainable; utilization; global; hydrological

WaterGAP is a global-scale hydrological simulation software that is for quantifying water flows and storages on all continents of the Earth. It is used for assessing water availability and water stress for both humans and non-human biota. In numerous studies, WaterGAP was applied to simulate the impact of climate change on e.g. irrigation water requirements, ecologically-relevant streamflow characteristics, groundwater recharge and water resources; simulation results were included in IPCC reports. WaterGAP has a leading role among global hydrological models. However, the research software, which has been modified by many PhD and postdoc researchers over more than 20 years, is still in a prototype state. It has never been refactored to fit a carefully planned software architecture and software documentation is very limited. The software resembles a collection of “script-like” files that each have close to 10,000 lines of code without any separation of concerns. It is therefore currently not possible to hand the software to researchers from other groups to replicate and understand the results or to extend the product for their own research. Even model improvements and extension by our groups are difficult. Due to the complexity of global hydrological models and the importance of the assessments and projections related to water resources it is essential to have research software that is of a quality that enables the reproducibility of results. The project goal is to rewrite the software with a modular structure using a modern programming language and providing extensive documentation. Additionally, the code should allow to flexibly change the spatial resolution of WaterGAP. The resulting software is to be testable, maintainable, extensible, and usable and thoroughly tested while maintaining the current computational performance. Rewriting will be done using an adapted scrum method, while designing the software architecture following the IEEE standard 1016-2009. A number of methods will be used to ensure internal and external quality management and to increase external usage of the resulting software product. Then, it will be possible for other researchers to run our global hydrological modelling software by themselves, to reproduce our results or investigate the impact of data and algorithm modifications on the results. The research community can compare algorithms, check the consistency and accuracy of our computational approach and find possible errors in the software more easily. For a quick and reliable reporting of such errors, we intent to make use of github for collaboration, automated testing and benchmark scenarios. This will not only enable others to use the research software more efficiently and make scientific results more reliable; a software that is extensible and maintainable also enables quicker scientific advances as new researchers spend less time understanding the code and writing new code.

WatGAP是一个全球范围的水文模拟软件，用于量化地球各大洲的水流和蓄水量。它用于评估人类和非人类生物群的水可获得性和水压力。在许多研究中，Water GAP被用于模拟气候变化对灌溉用水量、与生态相关的径流特征、地下水补给和水资源等方面的影响；模拟结果包括在IPCC报告中。WatGAP在全球水文模型中处于领先地位。然而，经过20多年来许多博士和博士后研究人员的修改，这款研究软件仍处于原型状态。它从未被重构以适应精心规划的软件体系结构，并且软件文档非常有限。该软件类似于一个“脚本类”文件的集合，每个文件都有近10,000行代码，没有任何关注点的分离。因此，目前还不可能将该软件交给其他小组的研究人员来复制和理解结果，也不可能将该产品推广到他们自己的研究中。即使是我们团队对模型的改进和推广也是困难的。由于全球水文模型的复杂性以及与水资源有关的评估和预测的重要性，必须有能够重现结果的高质量研究软件。该项目的目标是使用现代编程语言以模块化结构重写软件，并提供大量文档。此外，该代码应该允许灵活地更改Water GAP的空间分辨率。由此产生的软件将是可测试的、可维护的、可扩展的和可用的，并在保持当前计算性能的同时进行彻底测试。在设计遵循IEEE标准1016-2009的软件体系结构时，将使用经过调整的Scrum方法进行重写。将使用一些方法来确保内部和外部质量管理，并增加所产生的软件产品的外部使用量。然后，其他研究人员将可以自己运行我们的全球水文建模软件，复制我们的结果，或者调查数据和算法修改对结果的影响。研究团体可以比较算法，检查我们计算方法的一致性和准确性，并更容易地发现软件中可能的错误。为了快速可靠地报告此类错误，我们打算使用GitHub进行协作、自动化测试和基准测试场景。这不仅使其他人能够更有效地使用研究软件，使科学结果更可靠；可扩展和可维护的软件还能使科学进步更快，因为新的研究人员花更少的时间理解代码和编写新代码。