19 Jan 2021

Data Enrichment and Enhanced Accessibility of Waterborne Commerce Numerical Data: Spatially Depicting the National Waterway Network

This report provides methodologies and processes of data enrichment and enhanced accessibility of Waterborne Commerce and Statistics Center (WCSC) maintained databases. These databases house tabular and statistical data that reports on The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Civil Works Division National Waterway Network (NWN), which geospatially represents approximately 1,000 harbors and 25,000 miles of channels and waterways. WCSC is a division of The Institute for Water Resources (IWR). They have been tasked with the international collection, maintenance, and archival of all records involving commercial movements and commerce that occur on federal waterways. The current records structure is a large, tabular dataset and limited to the systems and processes put in place prior to the computing standards and capabilities available today. Methods have been tested and utilized to bring the tabular datasets into an optimized, modern geospatial network and expanded upon to create a higher resolution than previously maintained by the WCSC. This report will expand upon the applied methodologies to optimize data queries and the overall enhancement of the data system to allow for linkages to various other sources of information for commerce data enhancement for decision support assistance.