POSE: Phase I: CUDEM+IVERT, An Open-Source Framework for Rapid Development and Validation of Digital Elevation Models

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

This Pathway to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) project addresses the need for accurate coastal elevation models. Computer models of coastal land heights and water depths are important for many scientific and societal applications such as determining the flood risk for the United States’ coastal communities. The coastal elevation models are essential for emergency managers, infrastructure planners, and private industries such as property insurers. The accuracy of the coastal elevation models directly impacts the reliability of these public and private industry endeavors. The Coastal Elevation Model Team has also developed computer software to determine the accuracy of their elevation models. The software for creating coastal elevation models and assessing their accuracy to work closely together in two code repositories called the Continuously Updated Digital Elevation Model framework and the ICESat-2 Validation of Elevations Reporting Tool. These software tools allow users at multiple skill levels to create elevation models for many public and private applications and to know the accuracy of those models, providing an invaluable set of tools that directly benefits taxpayers, community stakeholders, and private industries. These software packages create elevation models from the fusion of numerous public datasets and generate rigorous accuracy assessments of these computer models. Both code repositories are open-source, meaning they are freely accessible to the public, and a variety of partner organizations and agencies are currently using them. This project scopes and plans an Open-Source Ecosystem (i.e., a governance framework) for long-term community development and improvements to these software packages. Starting with knowledge learned from the training sessions, the team is drafting a framework based on current knowledge of the users’ and collaborators’ needs. In parallel, the team is expanding the existing documentation of its software to assist users and collaborators when discussing the project’s future needs. The Coastal Elevation Model Team is hosting a set of community workshops at conferences that collaborators frequently attend, as well as virtual meetings with other users and teams, to iteratively improve the draft framework and incorporate community feedback. The team is also preparing a forward-looking plan that includes the needs of the collaborator community while also maintaining known “best practices” for healthy, open-source scientific software development. Finally, the Coastal Elevation Model Team is training students on how to use and contribute to the software environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.