U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY BULLETIN 2016
Selected Papers in the Applied Computer Sciences 1992
CHAPTER F
Use of Automated Methods to Prepare a U.S. Geological Survey Publication on Water
Use in the United States
By Howard A. Perlman
FIGURES
The U.S. Geological Survey, Water
Resources Division, is the principal water-data collection agency in the
United States. As a part of the water-data collection activities,
estimates of offstream, instream, and consumptive water use are compiled
and entered into a computerized data base. These water-use estimates are
compiled and published in a U.S. Geological Survey Circular at 5-year
intervals for the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands for
various categories of water use. This article de scribes the sources and
types of water-use data collected, the Aggregate Water-Use Data System,
the national water-use data base, and the electronic reports processing
that is, or can be, used to prepare camera-ready copy for the publication
of these U.S.
Geological Survey Circulars.
The U.S. Department of the
Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), through its Water Resources
Division (WRD), investigates the Nation's water resources. The USGS, the
principal Federal water-data collection agency, currently compiles about
70 percent of
the water data used by State, local, private, and other Federal agencies
to develop and manage the water resources in the United States.
As a part of the USGS water-resources program, estimates of surface-and
ground-water use in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin
Islands, hereafter referred to in this report as "States", are compiled
and entered into a computerized data storage and retrieval system. The
water-use data collected and stored in this data base consist of nine
categories of offstream and instream water use.
Since 1950, the USGS
has published a Circular every five years containing water-use estimates
by State and water-resources region. The purpose of the USGS Circular is
to describe the current use of the Nation's water resources and provide
information need ed by resource managers to plan for future water use. The
USGS Circular, "Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 1990,"
currently in preparation, will present the water-use estimates for 1990.
The Georgia District of the USGS's WRD has been assigned the task of
aggregating data furnished by each State into an automated data-base
system and using electronic reports-processing software to produce the
1990 USGS Circular. This article describes the
following aspects:
- Sources and types of water-use data being used to prepare the Circular,
- Aggregate Water-Use Data System (AWUDS),
- National water-use data base,
- Use of electronic reports processing to prepare the Circular, and
- Preparation of camera-ready copy for publication of the Circular.
Water-use estimates for
1990 were compiled throughout 1991 by USGS district offices in cooperation
with State and local agencies. Water-use specialists in each district
office compiled site-specific water-use data and entered it into a local
data base for use in preparing aggregate estimates. The methods used to
aggregate the site-specific data are determined at the State level. In 22
States, the water-use data are stored in the USGS Site-Specific Water-Use
Data System (SSWUDS). The remaining States use a variety of automated and
manual systems. Documentation describing the sources of water-use data and
the procedures used to compile the water-use estimates are maintained by
each district office.
For each State, water-use data are collected,
compiled, and entered into data files by county and hydrologic cataloging
unit. Hydrologic cataloging units, the lowest level of classification,
consist of distinct geographic regions based on surface topograp hy within
each State. The units represent part or all of a surface drainage basin or
a distinct hydrologic feature (Seaber and others, 1984). The data files
for each county or hydrologic cataloging unit contain data for the
following categories of water use: (1) public supply, (2) domestic, (3)
commercial, (4) irrigation, (5) livestock, (6) industrial use, (7) mining,
(8) thermoelectric power generation, and (9) hydroelectric power
generation. In addition, data are being compiled for sewage treatment and
reservoir evaporation.
The Aggregate Water-Use Data System (AWUDS) is a
USGS data-base management system on each district office minicomputer.
AWUDS is part of a larger water-data-management system called the National
Water Information System (NWIS). AWUDS allows the water-use specialist for
each State to store, update, and retrieve aggregate water-use data by
county, hydrologic subregion, and hydrologic cataloging unit.
AWUDS has established (1) an aggregate data base for each of the States and (2)
a national data base of aggregate water-use data. AWUDS was used to
compile aggregate water-use estimates published in the USGS Circular
"Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 1985" (Solley and others,
1988). Available output from AWUDS includes a variety of data retrievals,
reports, graphics (such as choropleth maps and pie, bar, and
cumulative-frequency charts), and quality-assurance routines. AWUDS stores
data for more than one reporting period, thereby providing a history of
water use for a State or local area. The reference documentation is stored
in computer files at each WRD district office.
Currently (1992), the NWIS staff is preparing an AWUDS user's manual, which is expected to be
available in 1992. The manual will contain information on the general
operating procedures of the programs in AWUDS.
After the 1990 water-use data are compiled and stored in AWUDS, the county and hydrologic
cataloging-unit data files from each State will be transferred
electronically to the WRD, Georgia District, for final quality-assurance
verification and aggregation into the national data base. The 1990
water-use data will be compiled in early 1992 for preparation of the 1990
USGS Circular, which will report national water-use data by each State and
by water-resources region. A series of computer programs on the Georgia
District PRIME minicomputer will be used to aggregate the individual State
files into national files.
A data-file tracking system will be used to process the
data files electronically transferred by the water-use specialist in each
State to the Georgia District. This system is a set of FORTRAN language
and PRIME Command Procedure Language (CPL) computer programs on the
minicomputer that is designed to track and analyze data files in a
three-step process:
- The water-use specialist will be notified by electronic mail when the water-use
data are received.
- The date and
time that water-use data are received will-be written to a data-tracking
file.
- The State data files will be analyzed using a set of -FORTRAN
computer programs similar to the quality-assurance programs in AWUDS. The
FORTRAN programs will perform the following functions:
- Check for data inconsistencies, such as population-served by
municipal supply being greater than total population of the area (county
or hydrologic cataloging unit);
- Check data in each category for inconsistencies, -such as
consumptive use of water being greater than total water withdrawals plus
water deliveries;
- Check to ensure that the State total for each data-element, by
county, is equal to the State total by hydrologic cataloging unit. (The
term "data-element" refers to an individual data item, such as
self-supplied domestic surface-water withdrawals ); and
- Produce a computer printout showing the results of - the
quality-assurance analysis. If errors are identified, the water-use
specialist will be notified. The water-use specialist will identify the
source of the problem at the State level and resubmit data files to the
Georgia District.
A series of computer programs in the national aggregation system on the
Georgia District minicomputer will be used to aggregate the State data
files into national files by State and water-resources region.
Water-resources regions are 21 designated natural
drainage basins or hydrologic areas in the States that contain either the
drainage area of a major river or the combined drainage basins of two or
more rivers. The method for aggregating the State data into national files
is different from that used to a ggregate data for water-resources regions
because region boundaries transcend State lines.
A computer program in
the national aggregation system will sum water-use data-element values for
all counties in a State and store these summations in a separate data file
for each State. The summation files for each State can then be used to
create the n ational data files.
The procedure for creating the
summation files of water-resources regions is more complex because the
data for a single region usually is contained in the hydrologic
cataloging-unit files of more than one State. The national aggregation
system will use a "lookup table" to determine which State files contain
data for each of the 21 water-resources regions in the States. Totals of
the data-element values for the hydrologic cataloging units will be
written into national data files for each of the water-resources regions.
For example, the data in 50 hydrologic cataloging units in Minnesota,
North Dakota, and South Dakota will be aggregated to create the
Souris-Red-Rainy water-resources region data file for the national data
base.
A separate data file will be created for each water-resources
region after the hydrologic cataloging-unit files of the State are
received into the data-file tracking system. This water-resources-region
file will be updated automatically when a State makes a change to the
hydrologic cataloging-unit file.
An important part of the 1990 USGS Circular will be the
data tables that present water-use estimates by category. The data tables
will list estimated water use by State and water-resources region for the
various water-use categories and summarize offstrea m, surface, ground,
and total water use. The national aggregation system will access the
individual State or water-resources-region data files to create the tables
by category. The system also rounds each value to the correct number of
significant digits.
For example, the table for domestic water use by State will be
generated from individual State-total data files that have been compiled
from individual county data files. In the national aggregation system, the
State name and individual domestic data-elem ent values will be selected
from the individual State-total data files and written to a new
domestic-by-State file. The national aggregation system will calculate a
total for each domestic data-element value and write these totals to the
domestic-by-State data file that will be used to generate the water-use category and
summary tables.
The national aggregation system will create data
tables by water-use category on the Georgia District minicomputer and
transmit the data files to a Data General AViiON workstation over a local
area network (LAN). The text and graphics for the 1990 USGS Circular will
be prepared on the Data General workstation using the electronic
reports-processing software FrameMaker (Hollway and Wiltshire, 1990,
p.C1-22).
FrameMaker is a page-composition software package that
integrates text, tables, and graphics (Campbell, 1990, p. 100). Most of
the text, tables, and graphics for the 1990 USGS Circular will be
developed outside of FrameMaker, using microcomputer-based word-processing
and graphics programs, and transferred into FrameMaker for
page composition. The page-composition components of FrameMaker will be
used to format the text and integrate the text with the tables and graphic
images.
One important aspect of the national aggregation system is the placement
of a special character between each data value in the water-use category
files. This character is interpreted by FrameMaker as a tab character used
to correctly space the data values
horizontally in each line of the water-use tables. The FrameMaker
software will be used exclusively to format the data tables; therefore,
once all data are brought into FrameMaker, the data files on the
minicomputer will no longer be needed for preparation of the USGS
Circular.
Designing the exact placement of text and headings in data
tables is more difficult than designing placement of the data. The table
headings will be designed first, and then data values will be brought into
the table and positioned under the correct headings. To aid in the design
of tables, the table headings will be entered into the FrameMaker
documents with tabs between words and reformatted. Typographical
characteristics, such as capital letters, leader patterns, bold type,
headers, and lines in the table headings, will be created in FrameMaker.
All water-use
category sections in the 1990 USGS Circular will have the same layout and
design. All sections, except that for thermoelectric power, will consist
of four pages. The thermoelectric power section will require two
additional pages of data tables to allow for additional summaries by fuel
source.
The first page of each water-use category section will have
descriptive text and pie charts (
fig. 1), and the second page will have
the water-resources-region data table and choropleth map (
fig. 2). The
third page will have the choropleth map of data by State, and the fourth
page will display the data tables by State.
A structure "template"
will be used to lay out the water-use category sections because the
sections are similar. The template will store the typographic properties
of the document components, such as margins, line spacing, text-column
widths, typeface, and other text characteristics, such as justification
and hyphenation. When the first category section is designed, the
formatting information will be stored in a template that will be used to
format the remaining water-use category sections of the USGS Circular.
Whenever a file is transferred into FrameMaker, the file will be
automatically structured using the format of the category template.
The first page of each water-use category section will be formatted into
three columns of 10-point Times-Roman type with a predetermined set of
margins, line separation, and column separation. Because some categories
will contain more text than others, ad justments to page formatting will
be necessary. Margins can be changed, leading space between lines can be
adjusted in small increments, and the type size can be changed if the text
requires more space than that allowed by the original template. When each
section is stored in a FrameMaker document, the adjustments and changes
also are stored in the template for that section.
The data tables
imported to the second and fourth pages will be placed into a
predetermined location on the page called a "frame" Data and table
headings will be formatted automatically to the proper typeface and point
size. The first time that a data tab le is brought into a FrameMaker
document, the data values must be manually placed across the page using
tab markers to align data values with their corresponding table headings.
Once the tab-marker locations are stored into the data-values template,
data tables transferred into the FrameMaker document will be aligned
automatically below the appropriate table headings.
Two pie diagrams will appear below the text on the first page of each water-use category
section. The pie diagrams will be created using business-charting software
on an Apple Macintosh microcomputer and transferred into FrameMaker
documents. Because the pie diagrams for each water-use category represent
different types of data, the labels and titles will be added using
FrameMaker. To ensure that the typographic characteristics of the labels
and titles are the same for similar diagrams throughout the 1990
USGS Circular, the page-layout template of the first set of pie diagrams
will become the template for all of the water-use categories.
The source of the choropleth maps is different from that of the pie diagrams.
The choropleth maps will be created using Environmental Sciences Research
Institute, Inc.'s (ESRI) ARC/INFO geographic information systems (GIS)
software on the minicomputer. Th e GIS software, which incorporates
electronic mapping capabilities with a relational data-base-management
system, can create choropleth maps showing a set of geographic boundaries
and areas, such as the State or water-resources-regions boundaries.
ARC/INF O assigns fill patterns and colors to each area according to the
data value of a selected water-use data element. Using the choropleth of
domestic water use by States as an example, the ARC/INFO program will
select all States having total freshwater withdrawal from 0 to 25 million
gallons per day (Mgal/d) and assign a 10-percent gray-scale shade for the
plot. Those States withdrawing 25.1 to 50 Mgal/d will be assigned a
30-percent gray-scale shade. Other withdrawal ranges will be assigned
increasingly dense fill patterns.
The choropleth maps transferred
into FrameMaker documents for the 1990 USGS Circular will not need graphic
manipulation, other than positioning on the page and scaling to the
correct size. The choropleth explanations, text, labels, and title will be
creat ed using ARC/INFO. ARC/INFO can store a plot as a text file in the
PostScript page-description language, and FrameMaker can translate the
PostScript page-composition commands into a plot.
Miscellaneous graphics to be used in the 1990 USGS Circular will include a stylized
sketch explaining different types of water use, a three-dimensional
multiple-year bar chart, and a bar-type chart showing the source and
disposition of water use in the United States. Although the FrameMaker
software has the capability to create drawings using relatively simple
lines and shapes, it will not be used to produce complex drawings and
graphs, such as pie, line, and bar charts from numeric data. These types
of graphics will be created by other software packages and transferred
into FrameMaker for integration of text and graphics.
The stylized sketch will be created on the microcomputer using a computer drawing
program and transferred into the FrameMaker document. The
three-dimensional bar chart will be similar to the bar chart used in the
1985 USGS Circular. The 1985 bar chart (Solley and others, 1988) was
partially drawn by computer, and bar-fill patterns and text labeling were
completed by hand. An effective charting software package was unavailable
to produce the exact chart needed in 1985, and may still be unavailable
for the 1990 USGS Circular. Many commercially available graphics programs
do not produce graphics that conform to USGS publication standards (Alt
and Iseri, 1986; Miller and Balthrop, 1987). The bar-type chart showing
the source and disposition of water use in the United States will be
drawn using the FrameMaker software.
An important note about the graphics for the 1990 USGS Circular is that most of the
labels, titles, and explanations will not be on the graphic image created by the charting
or drawing program but will be added using FrameMaker after the graphics
are transferred into the document.
Miscellaneous text in the 1990 USGS Circular will
include the title page, table of contents, conversion factors, glossary,
abstract, introduction, conclusion pages, and bibliography. The text will
be entered into word-processing files and transferred into FrameMaker
documents for formatting. Each of the miscellaneous text sections will be
stored in a separate FrameMaker document file using a separate formatting
template.
The 1990 USGS Circular will be prepared and stored as individual sections
of the complete FrameMaker document and will be brought separately into
FrameMaker. The sections will be individually designed and completed. A
FrameMaker book (a list of individual section names) will allow printing
of the complete 1990 USGS Circular at one time, in the proper order. The
completed USGS Circular will be "saved" by FrameMaker to PostScript
computer files and electronically transferred over the USGS minicomputer
network to a location that has an ultra-high-resolution raster
image-setter printer. This printer can translate the PostScript files and
produce publication-quality film negatives for camera-ready copy.
The use of automated techniques will play a major role in creating the data bases
and in publishing the USGS Circular "Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 1990."
The Aggregate Water-Use Data System will be used at the State and local level
to compile, tabulate, and perform quality-assurance analyses on water-use
data for the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Estimates of water use for nine categories of use will then be used to
create a national data-base system that can be used to aggregate the State
data for publication. Electronic reports-processing software will be used
to lay out and design the Circular and produce the publication-quality
film negatives needed for publication.
Alt, D.F., and Iseri, K.T., 1986,
Water Resources Division publication
guide-Volume 1, Publication policy and text preparation: U.S. Geological Survey
Open-File Report 87-205, 429 p.
Campbell, Art, 1990,
Prowess on the desktop: UNIX World, 1990, v.
7, no. 3, p. 100-105.
Hollway, R.A., and Wiltshire, D.A., 1990,
Evaluation of an electronic report processing system for producing
earth-science technical reports, in Stiltner, G.J., ed., Evaluation of
three electronic reports processing systems for preparing hydrologic
report s of the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division: U.S.
Geological Survey Open-File Report 89-0576, 66 p.
Miller, R.A., and Balthrop, B.H. (compilers), 1987,
Standards for illustrations in reports
of the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division: U.S. Geological
Survey, 238 p.
Seaber, P.R., Kapinos, F.P., and Knapp, G.L., 1984,
State hydrologic unit maps: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report
84-708, p. 4.
Solley, W.B., Merk, C.F., and Pierce, R.R., 1988,
Estimated use of water in the United States in 1985: U.S. Geological
Survey Circular 1004, 82 p
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