2023

Drought Interfaces

An interface for modeling water rights given water scarcity in the Colorado River Basin.

Certain Measures Wright-Ingraham InstituteSystems Designer, Project Lead

About

The Wright-Ingraham Institute invited us to propose a tool for drought in the Colorado River Basin. Complex natural forces and political interests that shape water in the region -- legal, economic, cultural, and ecological -- were unpacked and integrated into a model. The tool acts as piece of socio-technical infrastructure representative of the socio-technical problem of water scarcity, accounting rigorously for existing historical and existing conditions to construct a surface for testing different scenarios for allocating of water and water rights across the seven states who must collaborate in its management.

Research Brief

Starting with the paper written by The Wright-Ingraham Institute's research arm, StudyTank, as a driver, the domain of drought was initially conceived as the difference between allocated and actual water availability in the region. The legal allocation of water is defined in the Colorado River Compact.

These two documents and its positions undergirded the production of the interface.

The paper outlined conditions of the basin while also analyzing the insufficiencies of Colorado River Compact for water management. The interface was a response to the paper.

System Analysis

Systems are large and nebulous. The first phase focused on setting the groundwork for the system for scoping downstream. The paper was deliberately used as boundary for the system. Gaps between concepts were identified for further research. Concepts were both structured and integrated into a rough system model.

The goal during this phase was to work from the domain all the way down to the data through the process of decomposition, and to develop through conversation a common understanding of the system. Diagrams facilitated these conversations and areas of interests were flagged for additional research.

A flow diagram running from extreme scenarios and water shortage through water supply into a black box of water rights, then out to water demand, conflict resolution and transformed conditions, with questions such as who has it and who gets to do something about it above each stage.

Water Rights Blackbox

Major concepts and research questions / areas in relation to water rights were identified for further research to unpack the blackbox of decision-making around water rights.

Four three-circle Venn diagrams in a row, each crossing ownership, boundaries, deeds or rights with water sources and availability, centered on a water domain model, a water visualization and water data sources.

Domain Concepts

The domain concepts were translated into data and structured into areas of visualization. These venn diagrams transformed with each pass of looking at the same concepts through lenses of domain, visualization, and data to translate the domain concepts into data sources in an integrated manner.

Three tables classifying the forms of water: surface water by type and natural or artificial origin, a grid of water quality, and municipal uses.

Water Sources

Once data sources were identified, identifying them technically required another pass at decomposition. At this level, the various forms of water were identified and assessed for sourcing feasibility. Dams, reservoirs / lakes, and rivers were identified as the most feasible due to public availability.

A map of the federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin, their lands marked in red over the basin's upper and lower halves, with a numbered table of 29 tribe names below.

Cultural Analysis

Conflicts around water center around social questions of culture as much as they center around technical questions of resource management. The ways that water has been managed represents a particular worldview. These different cultural lenses needed to be accounted for. In the case of water, the boundaries of indigenous tribes and how they intersect with federal and state geographies was brought in to represent the needs of different stakeholders. Conversations were had early on about the inclusion of all stakeholders.

System Modeling

The process of visualization served to integrate and surface additional concepts and gaps. The goal was not to duplicate the domain model in representational form but to focus on understanding the relational dynamics and flows between concepts that would otherwise pose a cognitive burden textually and diagrammatically.

In other words, these visualizations were a first pass at understanding how things moved.

Three axonometric blocks of a green and cyan landscape over pink ground, the first tracing precipitation, evaporation and runoff, the others stacking groundwater, surface water and plant layers above and below it.

Water Cycle Visualization

Water was traced throughout the natural and infrastructural water cycles to develop a system model of the primary object.

A landscape water cycle block beside a tree diagram titled Flow In - Flow Out = Change in Storage, branching into colored boxes for each inflow and outflow.

Algorithm Development

A quantification of drought was developed around water budgeting. Borrowed from hydrologists interested in natural systems, and retooled, this quantitative model / algorithm was retooled for actual water availabilities collected from sensors. The formula served as the seed for functionally reducing the data space upon which a broader cultural interpretation of water could be developed.

Semi-Structured Interviews

Four stakeholders -- a river ecologist, a superlawyer representing farmers, a geohydrologist, a water economist, a director of water resources, and a drought science advisor working for the Bureau of Reclamation -- were interviewed for their domain expertise and for concept validation.

A table of interview key points and their codes beside two boards of sticky notes clustering the codes, one grouped under Federal needs.

Conceptual Design

Three concepts were dynamically prototyped to flesh out conceptual directions with the client and test data availability. Since our client was a non-profit that had little experience with digital technology, I had to design our prototypes to carefully facilitate conversations in order to elicit requirements and minimize distractions while maintaining conceptual openness. At the same time, our clients were extremely sophisticated architects, so the visual design had to be compelling. Basic wireframing for rapid prototyping would be insufficient to guiding the conversation considering the design caliber expected from Certain Measures. Flashy design-forward prototyping would be distracting and present problems for the engineering team downstream as this was expected to be a dense application that would, at the same time, be used by a general audience. The challenge in leading this particular client through the project was balancing client design sophistication, technical requirements elicitation, and user needs at the right level through every phase of the project.

For the first pass during conceptual design phase, color was used intentionally and sparingly with a focus on visualization, data, and information architecture. Rules on common interaction patterns were judiciously broken.

Three concepts extended based on data design research: 1) Water Allocations, 2) Worldviews, and 3) Seniority, each illustrating particular frames around public data available on water.

A static mock-up of the water rights screen: seven states' allocation percentages and acre-feet above a black streamgraph over time, with a strip of reservoir photographs beneath and a note that users can hover to see related dam and inflow information.

A static mock-up of the worldviews dashboard: a column for each of seven states with its share, a state outline over its river basins, monthly temperature charts, and rows of circles sized by population and crop yield, with a note that users can see a dashboard of water-related dependencies.

A static mock-up of the seniority screen: a list of land owners with their acreage on the left and a pale relief map of Utah on the right with tribal parcels darkened, under filters for owner type, state and water type.

Streamflow Concept

We decided to focus on Water Allocations data through a Streamflow design concept. I extended the initial conceptual design prototype into a logical design prototype by processing and modeling the data gathered with design-first intent. Where the first phase had no interactions involved with snapshots of the interface only, I moved into building dynamic interactions into this phase to get into deeper design discussion. This phase brought in real data with real interactions.

A static mock-up of the second version of the water rights screen: legal allocation above and actual supply below for seven states, with a band of reservoir satellite images between them and three reservoir cards open.

Visualization Design

Iterations were made to explore how the Colorado River System could be visualized independent of its natural form to create an interface that was not a literal map.

The Colorado River network traced in its natural form, each branch colored by its level in the hierarchy of tributaries.

River Network Structure

The river system was structurally classified according to its branching relation to the main stem. Doing this outputs a Strahler number which describes the branching complexity of the system through a hierarchy of tributaries. For the CRB, the complexity reaches a Strahler number of seven. The seven levels were then quickly mapped to color prototype a visuallzation.

The river network redrawn as a vertical tree of colored nodes joined by straight lines at 45 degree angles.

River Modularization

Each branch of the river was reduced into a line between two nodes to create a modular component. The language was then applied across all branches in the river network, according to a simplified spatial orientation that reduced angles to increments of 45 degrees.

The modular river tree rotated to run horizontally across a landscape frame.

Display Re-Orientation

Flowing from east to west to match its hydrological reality, the river network was rotated 90 degrees to match the landscape orientation of the default display of a desktop computer.

Visual Design

As the concepts were prototyped, visual design for look and feel was continually refined for the underlying data.

A geographic map of the Colorado River Basin.

Final Application

After leading the client through the conceptual and design research phase of the project as well as developing preliminary visual direction, the engineering team took over final production as I had to leave the project for other opportunities. In my time there we were able to attain scope for an introduction page to the interface, and the data design and streamflow concept was approved. After my departure, the team made the technical decision to build final application on Mapbox which constrained the rest of the design. A later design team created the interface onboard sequence.

Drought Interface Trailer

Streamflow Scenario Modeler

Data Layers

The Drought Interfaces page on the Wright-Ingraham Institute's site: a gray text panel introducing the tool over a photograph of a red rock canyon and desert shrubs.

Water