The Future of Water Depends on Open Data
Water is central to life. Across the West, water management challenges are becoming existential concerns for communities. From drought and groundwater management to flood risk and ecosystem health, decisions about water affect infrastructure and the environment across the region. Access to reliable, transparent, and usable data becomes increasingly important as the challenges to water management become increasingly complex. California is developing several major initiatives to manage these critical natural resource challenges. From groundwater sustainability to stormwater management, high-quality, domain-specific geospatial infrastructure is needed.
Open water data plays a key role. In 2016, California approved the Open and Transparent Water Data Act with the intention of establishing minimum open data management standards. By making datasets findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible, agencies, researchers, and communities can work from a shared understanding of conditions and trends. Open data enables collaboration across jurisdictions, supports reproducible analysis, and allows local organizations and the public to engage more directly with water issues that affect them.
California Open Water Data Initiative is one effort aimed at improving how water data is accessed and used across the state. The initiative focuses on increasing transparency, integrating datasets from multiple sources, and making information easier to discover and apply. This includes developing shared data standards, improving access through open platforms, and supporting tools that make complex datasets publicly observable.
FOSS4G North America 2026 is developing a strong program focused on the public water data infrastructure. We welcome presentations, workshops, and poster proposals that highlight open water data platforms, standards, tools, governance approaches, and implementation case studies. The conference will take place November 2–4, 2026, in Sacramento, California.