The California Water Data Consortium is partnering with FlowWest to support the State Water Resources Control Board and Department of Water Resources in publishing critical urban water use and drought data on the California Natural Resources Agency’s Open Data Portal.

Until recently, these valuable datasets were either unpublished or scattered across different departments, making it difficult to answer fundamental water management questions. Now, these resources are available in analysis-ready formats to support researchers, state staff, and the public.

In this session, you’ll hear directly from Ashley Vizek of FlowWest about the process of preparing these datasets for public use. Additionally, Master of Environmental Data Science (MEDS) students from the University of California Santa Barbara’s Bren School will share insights from their work analyzing this newly released data to answer pressing drought management questions.

Why This Matters

Open and well-documented drought data is essential for building California’s water resilience. The Bren students use these newly published datasets to examine drought management questions from multiple perspectives and develop recommendations for best practices in data analysis. Their work includes a gap analysis that will help identify what additional information is needed to answer vital questions about drought in California. Join us to learn how these collaborative efforts help transform shared data into actionable insights for more effective drought response and planning.

Presenters

• Ashley Vizek, FlowWest
• Thomas Gibbens-Matsuyama, UCSB Bren MEDS program
• Emma Mitchell, UCSB Bren MEDS program
• Karol Paya, UCSB Bren MEDS program
• Takeen Shamloo, UCSB Bren MEDS program