AQUIFERIUM: A TOUCH-ENABLED LEARNING PLATFORM FOR THE FUTURE OF WATER RESOURCE EDUCATION

The Edwards Aquifer is one of the nation’s most productive groundwater supplies and an essential water source to over two million South-Central Texans. The Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA) is the Texas entity responsible for managing, enhancing, and protecting the resource. To broaden the scientific understanding of the aquifer, bring awareness of the indigenous endangered species and the plans in place to protect them, and encourage conservation, the EAA sought collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Agile Technology to create a touch-enabled, digital-learning platform, called Aquiferium.

The Aquiferium application is an advanced example of interactive design that can lead to data fusion for science education. What sets the tool apart is its firm underpinning in data, innovative new forms of interface design, and the reusable platform. A key advance is the creation of a framework that can be used to feed new data, videos maps, images, or formats of information into the application with relative ease. This makes Aquiferium a tool that can be reused, updated, and deployed for a wide range of audiences, meeting the EAA’s goal of broadening outreach efforts within its jurisdiction.

Each interactive within Aquiferium is based on real data – a simple concept, but in reality quite advanced for this type of application. While most websites and applications are based on images, limiting their ability to be updated or changed, Aquiferium has been built using data from the ground up, which means it can be kept up-to-date and represent evolving conditions. The platform is the cornerstone that will enable use of Aquiferium for interactive education all the way up to real-time decision support. The ability to feed multiple data streams into an application, and reuse that application framework for other settings is revolutionary and opens up the door for highly innovative uses in the future.

With the Edwards Aquifer and other critical water resources facing the effects of historic drought, increased demand, and potential contamination, the need has never been greater to develop resources that will effectively communicate conservation and protection across a broad audience and geographical area. Aquiferium is designed to do just that.