ABSTRACT Maintaining a positive cost–benefit ratio for hydrologic data collection is challenging for public water management and regulatory agencies given budgetary constraints. We examine and discuss the evolution of a government agency in the last 20 years to identify the best practices for collecting, managing, and disseminating hydrologic data. The best practices include (1) developing in-house field data collection systems and integrating them with commercial, off-the-shelf software for the enterprise database, (2) standardizing hardware and data acquisition software, (3) collaborating with other agencies and tracking their data collection efforts to avoid redundancy, (4) utilizing open-source programming languages for data quality assurance, (5) rationalizing data collection network, and (6) taking a proactive approach with data collection to better prepare for hydroclimatic variability. Transforming data into easily understandable information and its near-real-time dissemination can add value to the data (e.g. providing inundation instead of water level above mean sea level) in the future.

中文翻译：

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国家水管理机构水文信息学的发展

摘要 考虑到预算限制，保持水文数据收集的正成本效益比对于公共水资源管理和监管机构来说是一项挑战。我们研究并讨论了政府机构在过去 20 年中的演变，以确定收集、管理和传播水文数据的最佳实践。最佳实践包括 (1) 开发内部现场数据收集系统并将其与企业数据库的商用现成软件集成，(2) 标准化硬件和数据采集软件，(3) 与其他机构合作，以及跟踪他们的数据收集工作以避免冗余，(4) 利用开源编程语言来保证数据质量，(5) 合理化数据收集网络，(6) 采取积极主动的方法收集数据，以更好地为水文气候变化做好准备。将数据转化为易于理解的信息及其近乎实时的传播可以在未来增加数据的价值（例如提供洪水而不是高于平均海平面的水位）。