Description of HydroShare Resource Types and Metadata Terms

HydroShare Resource Types

A "resource" is the discrete unit of digital content within HydroShare. Resources are social objects that can be created, modified, versioned, shared, annotated, discovered, and accessed. A resource is the granular unit used for management and access control within HydroShare. Persistent identifiers, access control, versioning, sharing, and discovery are all managed at the resource level. Each resource type has a set of metadata elements that are standard across all resource types and may have resource type specific metadata elements that are defined in the sections below. The following terms define the types of resources that can be created in HydroShare:


In prior versions of HydroShare, there were other resource types that are now obsoleted by the Composite resourced and typed aggregations. Generic resource is superseded by Composite resource. Geographic Feature, Geographic Raster, Multidimensional, Time Series, Referenced Time Series, Model Program, and Model Instance resource types are obsoleted by their corresponding aggregation types. Specific Model Instance resource types (SWAT Model Instance and MODFLOW Model Instance) are no longer supported. Users now can use Model Aggregation functionality to describe any model, including SWAT and MODFLOW.

Common Metadata Terms for all HydroShare Resources

We chose the standard Dublin Core metadata elements as the common metadata used by all resources. All resources in HydroShare use the standard Dublin Core metadata elements. Those terms are defined by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative at https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/. Additionally, we added a few metadata terms at the resource level to meet use cases for which there were no Dublin Core terms. These elements are defined below. Some specific content types within resources use additional, content type-specific metadata terms as defined in the following sections.

Metadata terms for the Web App Resource Type

Metadata terms for the Composite Resource Type

A Composite resource is a resource that can include multiple files without file format limitations. However, it is also capable of containing typed aggregations of files (e.g., a geographic feature aggregation stored as an ESRI shapefile). The Composite resource is designed to support metadata and data functions at both the aggregation level and resource level to better support data management in HydroShare. Each aggregation contained within a Composite resource may be annotated with general metadata that apply specifically to the aggregation. Aggregations may also have metadata specific to the aggregation type and additional data functions established for that type (e.g., metadata extraction from TIFF or NetCDF file). The resource level metadata for a Composite resource is the same as metadata of the generic resource type.

The following terms define the types of aggregations that can be added to a Composite Resource:

Metadata Terms for Aggregation Types

Metadata terms for the Time Series Resource Type

The time series aggregation type is based on Version 2.0 of the Observations Data Model. You can learn more about ODM2 at htt://www.odm2.org. Some of the metadata terms for the time series aggregation type are based on controlled vocabularies for ODM2 that are managed at http://vocabulary.odm2.org.





Metadata Terms for the Referenced Time Series Aggregation Type

Metadata Terms for the Multidimensional (NetCDF) Aggregation Type



Metadata Terms for the Geographic Raster Aggregation Type




Metadata Terms for the Model Program Aggregation Type













Metadata Terms for the Model Instance Aggregation Type