KISTERS Using New OGC Standards to Bring Clients' Hydrological Data to the Cloud

[Phil]

Aachen, Germany/Citrus Heights, CA, September 30, 2011— KISTERS
presented its final results of the Surface Water Interoperability
Experiments #1 and #3 to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) in
Boulder, CO this past week. The end result of this work was KiWIS
(KISTERS Web Interoperability Solution), the first commercially
available and robust service module on the market. Used in combination
with WISKI or Hydstra, KiWIS is able to both consume and publish real-
time hydrological data over the Internet (http://kiwis.kisters.de)
using open standards like WaterML 2.0 and SOS. This combination can
also be placed “on-top” of existing time series data archives,
providing a quick and efficient method for disseminating and
retrieving data from the Internet.

KISTERS worked closely with leading organizations such as the Global
Runoff Data Center (GRDC), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO), US Geological Survey (USGS), 52 North,
SANDRE, German Waterways DLZ-IT, Australian Bureau of Meteorology
(BOM), and Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) to advance the
development of WaterML 2.0, test its use with the OGC standard SOS.

A WISKI system was implemented for the Global Runoff Data Center at
KISTERS head office in Aachen, thus enabling the GRDC to view all of
their meta data, specific surface water attributes, time series data,
and derived data products like Daily Mean, Mean Lowest Flow, Monthly
Flow, Monthly Highest Flow etc. within the WISKI system.

On top of KISTERS GRDC System KISTERS set the KiWIS service.  KiWIS is
able to publish WISKI content via the SOS API as WaterML 2.  In
addition KiWIS can publish the same content as WaterOneFlow and
WaterML 1.  KiWIS also supports standards such as ESRI’s layer
packages. With KiWIS on top of the GRDC system KISTERS is now able to
bring the GRDC data into the cloud for everyone to use.

Michael Natschke, WISKI Product Manager for KISTERS says, “We are
extremely excited at the outcome of the work done in these IE’s.  If
it were not for the immense efforts put forward by all the initiators
and participants in the SW and GW IE’s, KISTERS would not have been
able to develop KiWIS.  Interoperability issues around data and data
formats between and within the surface water, groundwater and
meteorological domains are now being solved with KiWIS.  What’s even
better, is the fact that this data can be seen by any client
application able to use these open standards.” Stefan Fuest, Product
Manager, Web/GIS for KISTERS notes, "KiWIS makes use of KISTERS'
proprietary high speed data protocol for moving massive amounts of
time series data to the Internet, unrivaled by any other commercial
water data management software in the marketplace. I want to thank
everyone involved in keeping KISTERS at the forefront of implementing
open standards for water data management."

Peter Fitch, the research program leader for Environmental Information
Systems at CSIRO, co-ordinator of the Interoperability experiment and
key member of the Hydro Domain Working Group at the OGC which is
working to develop WaterML 2.0 comments, “I share Michael’s enthusiasm
for the development of open standards like WaterML 2.0.  Having
vendors like KISTERS participate in the development of open standards
and producing tools such as KiWIS is critical for the success of the
OGC Hydro Domain working group and its goals for improved access to
and interoperability of hydrological data.”

Ulrich Looser, Head of the GRDC, emphasizes that “the advantages of
web services are clearly recognized by the GRDC and a process has
started to develop web services for a number of GRDC requirements.  We
certainly look forward to continuing our close work with KISTERS to
build upon the many successes we have seen thus far.”

Several government agencies and university institutions across the
globe are already benefitting from the KiWIS service.  With KISTERS
service orientated architecture and high speed data protocols, sharing
large amounts of water data in the cloud is a reality!

KISTERS develops industry-proven software solutions for water data
management, air data management, and energy data management. KISTERS
has high-capacity scalable systems that can be easily tailored to suit
both their customers’ and local demands.  KISTERS software is
implemented around the world and conforms to all the major industry
standards.  Their customers are private companies - from small firms
up to well-known multinationals - as well as all levels of government.

For information on this press release, please contact the following
individual who is closest to your region;

Roland Funke
KISTERS AG, Germany
+49 241 9671 -179
roland...@kisters.de
www.kisters.de

Phil Stefanoff
KISTERS North America, Inc., USA
1-916-723-1441
phil.st...@kisters.net
www.kisters.net

Peter Heweston
KISTERS Pty., Australia
+61 2 6288 -2288
peter.h...@kisters.com.au
www.kisters.com.au

For additional information or a hardcopy of this release, contact:
Jennifer Durda +1 916-723-1441, Jennife...@kisters.net, 7777
Greenback Lane, Suite 209, Citrus Heights, CA, 95610-5800