A new study from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers and others applies social science methods to streamline how stakeholders nationwide access and utilize the water data the agency collects, synthesizes, and releases, including that related to water availability.

In the study, researchers wanted to better understand the needs of stakeholders, including water managers, for a new USGS Water Resource Mission Area (WMA) program, Integrated Water Availability Assessments (IWAAs). The goals of IWAAs are to provide nationally and regionally consistent assessments of water for human and ecologic needs by identifying factors that limit water availability across space and time. The researchers applied what’s known as user-centered design to learn how stakeholders use, interpret, share, and interact with USGS data. User-centered design is generally separated into three steps: discover, design, and development. For this study, researchers focused on the discover step, identifying potential users of the IWAAs data platform by engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders across the nation. "Looking at the specialized water resource management groups we identified for this study, we found that many water managers face various obstacles to accessing data, such as insufficient technological infrastructures or low data literacy,” said USGS Geographer Diana Restrepo-Osorio, lead author of the study. “By focusing our efforts on these small, specialized groups of end users, we can find the nuance and details that we're looking for when trying to tailor the types of products and data-delivery systems that USGS produces.” The authors note that identifying which IWAAs stakeholders to include in the next step is essential as the program moves forward with usability and prototype testing of initial modeling products. Read more at USGS.