161.03 Hydrography Data Standard

Hydrography data is a critical base data element used to support Washington State’s mission of protecting the environmental quality of the air, land, and water resources of Washington state.  The objective of this standard is to designate a single, common hydrography data model for agency geospatial data, geographic information systems, and data exchanges.  Geospatial data that is built on common technical standards:

• Facilitates data exchanges for key datasets,
• Reduces staff time spent converting between differing alignments, route systems and measures,
• Minimizes error introduction brought on by the need to convert between differing alignments, route systems and measures, and
• Enables on the fly integration of distributed and separately maintained geo-datasets.

The standard is designed to improve data quality and accuracy, and simplify the exchange of hydrography data among state agencies, local, tribal, state, and federal users and producers.