HyDaMS - the Hydrographical Data Management System

Hydrological every-day life of Hydrografie Österreichs is dealing with large-scale time-related data quantities (time series with different parameters and time references) which are necessary for multifarious and extensive evaluations.

The ever increasing demands placed in data quality required as early as about 30 years ago the introduction of EDP-supported data processing. The first software of that kind was developed in the 1980ies and installed at a mainframe computer system at the Computing and Technology Centre of Agriculture and Forestry (Land- und Forstwirtschaftliches Rechenzentrum LFRZ) in Vienna.  In the middle of the 1990ies the data collection was outsourced - at that time the, for the most part analogously collected time series, were still manually digitalized- at the hydrographical organisational units of the Federal Provinces.

HyDaMS

With the use of digital collection tools, the so-called data collectors, the requirements placed on data management changed once again, which could only be met by means of a modern hydrographic data management system.  The objective was to develop a system which combines and administers the information content of the time series with many other measuring site-relevant data - the master data of the measuring sites. In addition to that routine evaluations, processing possibilities, data quality controls with graphic interfaces for the users had to be integrated, and a modular extension had to be possible.

The company toposoft, an engineering office from Aachen (Germany), was awarded after an extensive evaluation stage the contract to develop the Hydrographical Data Management System, which has been called HyDaMS and has been alleviating the work of Hydrografie Österreich in the meantime for 15 years.

HyDaMS enables, via a simple user interface, rapid data access, makes available many hydrologically relevant functionalities on time series, and enables the modular extension by additional evaluation tools. The data model comprises basically the master data and time series, with the master data being stored at a relational database. The time-related mass data, however, are stored at binary files.

With HyDaMS the user can represent and analyse the relation between all important parameters of the water balance. Apart from the preparation of the Austrian Hydrographical Yearbook, it is also possible to evaluate water-related natural disasters speedily and efficiently.

HyDaMS is installed at all computers of the hydrographical organisational units and at via Donau (Österreichische Wasserstraßen Ges.m.b.H.).

The measuring site-master data are maintained on the spot at the provincial hydrographical offices; the time series are permanently recorded, examined, and transferred by means of programmes especially developed for this purpose via the internet in a compressed form to Directorate IV/4  - Water Balance (Hydrographical Central Office).