Metro Stormwater Geodata Project

About the project.
MetroGIS in partnership with Hennepin County, Ramsey County, Ramsey-Washington Metro Watershed District and the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center is working with a broad group of interested public and private sector stakeholders toward the development of a multi-purpose stormwater geodata transfer standard.

Purpose of the standard. This stormwater geodata transfer standard is intended to meet a range of known business needs including flow modeling, conflict detection, to facilitate data integration between GIS and asset management systems and to assist in identifying asset ownership and maintenance responsibility. Longer term, this geodata standard is intended to eventually serve as a means to federate data to create a regional stormwater system dataset across the metropolitan region.

Draft Stormwater Data Standard

On January 7, 2022, the MSWGP Steering Team delivered its draft stormwater geodata transfer standard (v. 0.6) and draft inlet-outlet-pond inspection schema (v. 0.3) to the Geospatial Advisory Council’s Standards Committee.

The MSWGP team published the draft standard in development out for two rounds of public input and stakeholder review (from April 2020 through December 2020, and again from July 2021 through September 2021). These comments were collected, documented, and reviewed and informed and shaped the current draft standard which is available in the .zip archive available below.

Draft stormwater geodata transfer standard (v. 0.6), draft inlet-outlet-pond inspection schema (v. 0.3) and public comments received during 2020 and 2021.
(12 MB .zip file) (01/07/2022)

Providing Comments

The MSWGP draft stormwater standard has been through two rounds of stakeholder review (from April- December 2020 and from July-September 2021). The current draft version (v. 0.6) reflects the changes of the stakeholder input received and will be delivered to the Geospatial Advisory Council’s Standards Committee for their review and consideration in late 2021. This Committee has the option to advance the standard for additional public review or return the standard back to the MSWGP Steering Team for additional work.

The MSWGP Steering Team continues to informally collect input on the draft standard and welcomes public comment, suggestions and recommendations on how to improve the draft standard to meet the various needs for stormwater infrastructure data.

Please email any desired revisions or suggestions for inclusion or improvement to any of the following MSWGP co-coordinators:

Geoff Maas
Ramsey County
[email protected]

Carrie Magnuson
Ramsey Washington Metro Watershed District
[email protected]

Alex Blenkush
Hennepin County
[email protected]

MSWGP Project Documentation

Below are current documents relevant to the MSWGP effort.

Project Charter and Two-Page Summary

MSWGP Project Charter (Approved 08.28.2018)
MSWGP Two-Page Summary(Updated 05.10.19)

Stakeholder Input and Business Needs

Stakeholder Input / Business Needs Document (PDF)

Steering Team Minutes & Presentations

MSWGP Contact List (Updated 8.21.2019)

MSWGP Contact List (Updated 08.21.2019)

DNR & BWSR Data Specifications

Below are links to related documents and resources prepared by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (for culvert data) and the Board of Water and Soil Resources (for drainage data):

DNR's Culvert Data Specficiation (2011);
BWSR Drainage Data Specification (2016);
Excel-formatted version of both specifications ;

Context and Background

Work on the Metro Stormwater Geodata Project (MSWGP) commenced in April 2018, with presentations and stakeholder input sessions on April 17 (in Medina) and June 12 (in St. Paul) and the formation of a Steering Team convening for the first time on June 26, 2018 in Minneapolis.

The MSWGP project aims to:

Engage both the data producer and data consumer communities to discover what business needs they have for an inter-jurisdictional stormwater dataset and accompanying data standard;
Collaboratively work toward developing a data transfer standard and developing work flows, agreements and understandings between participating partners;
Document and address policy issues surrounding data availability and protection of assets;
To identify and capitalize on both existing formal and informal relationships in place among the partners in working toward federating the data together;

Building upon prior work...

The MSWGP builds upon prior efforts in Minnesota to develop a data transfer standard for stormwater information.In 2010, an initial Draft Digital Stormwater Data Exchange Transfer Standard was developed, as well as a pilot project focused on gathering and assessing data in the Battle Creek Sub-Watershed of the Ramsey-Washington-Metro Watershed District.

Documents on the original Draft Stormwater Standard can be found here.

An Excel spreadsheet version of the original 2010 Draft Stormwater Standard can be found here: Excel Version of Draft Stormwater Standard

Contact

If you have questions about, or interest in this project, please contact:

Geoff Maas, AICP GISP
Affiliate Faculty, University of Minnesota
763.772.4287
[email protected]