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Fostering the Use of Scientific Water Models from Different Stakeholder Perspectives through the Sustainable Water Through Integrated Modeling (SWIM) Platform
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  • Luis A Garnica Chavira,
  • Josiah Heyman,
  • Natalia Villanueva-Rosales,
  • Deana Pennington
Luis A Garnica Chavira
University of Texas at El Paso

Corresponding Author:lagarnicachavira@utep.edu

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Josiah Heyman
University of Texas at El Paso
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Natalia Villanueva-Rosales
University of Texas at El Paso
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Deana Pennington
University of Texas at El Paso
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Abstract

The interpretation and use of scientific models are relevant to public discourse and decision-making about future water scenarios. Tools to use these scientific models aim to facilitate understanding water systems; however, the information in these tools can be so vast, complex, and prone to uncertainties that users may find using some of these tools a cumbersome task. Users can be presented with numerous outputs, visualizations, and vocabulary that are irrelevant or do not align with their perspective (i.e., user role) in the water system under study. To address these issues, the SWIM platform extends the capabilities of traditional Web-based graphical interfaces to foster the use of scientific models, in particular, water sustainability models. With the integration of a recommender system and a dynamic interface, SWIM provides users with a list of prioritized outputs (i.e., modeling results) based on their perspective, to reduce the overload of data presented to users. Users are also provided with a range of output visualization graphs and narrative elements (i.e., contextual natural language descriptions) to support the interpretation of model results. The SWIM interface design provides a seamless high-level workflow for models developed in different modeling software tools and languages. The SWIM platform is designed to foster interoperability by providing open APIs and knowledge bases to access data, metadata, and models (i.e., Model-As-A-Service). This presentation highlights the key elements of SWIM that enable the interpretation of scientific model outputs from different perspectives and the interoperability features of this platform.