Water Assessment and Visualization Engine (WAVE)

The Water Assessment and Visualization Engine (WAVE) application is a novel tool designed for rapid global water budget analysis. WAVE leverages publicly accessible gridded hydrologic data available in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) catalog for both historic and near-real time analysis. The creation of WAVE was largely motivated by the desire to (1) overcome the common lack of reliable in situ data in developing countries, and (2) increase access to remote sensing and modeling data for international and domestic applications. WAVE allows for the visualization and analysis of spatial and temporal water-storage change on a monthly time-step and user-defined time period for nearly any watershed in the world. Further, WAVE enables the regional comparison of available hydrologic datasets for individual water budget variables to support uncertainty analysis and guide prioritization of monitoring network development. WAVE additionally provides an efficient way to visualize physical basin characteristics, global land cover datasets and analysis of GRACE-derived terrestrial water storage. WAVE is designed to be highly flexible, allowing ready modification to tailor analysis toward specific user needs, for both international and domestic applications.