Data and hydroinformatics: new possibilities and challenges

The technology evolution, with new types of sensors such as acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), multibeam sonars, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and pushbroom cameras, has deeply modified the quality and the quantity of data available on hydro-environments. The hydroinformatics systems now have the possibility to investigate the details of the physical hydrodynamic process as well as the complexity of the geometry of the continental and marine environments. This new situation represents a unique situation where all hydroinformatics approaches (data driven and physically based) can be associated and combined. We provide a general overview of the different new emerging technologies and explore the added value provided by the new datasets. The presentation covers the data acquisition processes for velocity of currents and river flows. Doppler technology is presented and illustrated through an example located in Monaco. The numerous datasets demonstrate clearly the ability of the technology to highlight the complexity of the physical processes and to revisit the assumptions made in the different modelling systems. The availability of data allows the combination of data driven models in order to generate boundary conditions for physically based tools. The second part of the paper discusses high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) for bathymetry and topography representation. Geometry representation is a key issue in distributed models. Advances in the form of multibeam sonar and pushbroom cameras allow an improved modelling process. The hydroinformatics tools are facing a new challenge, in that the conceptual approaches used in the different models have to be redefined for a data rich environment.