User priorities for hydrological monitoring infrastructures supporting research and innovation

Abstract. Observational data availability, quality, and access are major obstacles to hydrological science and innovation. To alleviate these issues, major investments are being made in hydrological monitoring infrastructures to enable data collection and sharing at unprecedented scales and resolution. These projects integrate a range of complex physical and digital components, which require careful design to prioritise the needs of end-users and optimise their value delivery. We present here the findings of multiple-methods research on end-user needs for a GBP 38 million hydrological monitoring and research infrastructure in the UK, integrating a systematic literature review of common user-requirements with interviews of 20 national stakeholders. We find a demand for infrastructures that complement their provision of baseline hydrological datasets, where feasible, with additional services designed specifically to enable wider and more decentralised data collection. This can unlock the capacities of user communities by addressing barriers to data collection through, for example, the provision of land access, reliable benchmark datasets, equipment rental and technical support. Similarly, value can be unlocked by providing data management services, including data access, storage, quality control, processing, visualisation and communication. Our respondents further consider digital and physical spaces where users can collaborate to be critical for incubating genuine value to science and innovation. We conclude that new hydrological monitoring infrastructures require concurrent investments to build and nurture associated user, research and innovation communities, where specific enabling support is provided to facilitate collaborations. Supplementing digital and monitoring services with support for data collection and collaboration among active, value-generating user communities can produce multiplier effects from initial capital investments, by attracting longer-term contributions of ideas, methods, findings, technologies, data, training and investments from their beneficiaries.