A review of open source software solutions for developing water resources web applications

Water resources web applications or “web apps” are growing in popularity as a means to overcome many of the challenges associated with hydrologic simulations in decision-making. Water resources web apps fall outside of the capabilities of standard web development software, because of their spatial data components. These spatial data needs can be addressed using a combination of existing free and open source software (FOSS) for geographic information systems (FOSS4G) and FOSS for web development. However, the abundance of FOSS projects that are available can be overwhelming to new developers. In an effort to understand the web of FOSS features and capabilities, we reviewed many of the state-of-the-art FOSS software projects in the context of those that have been used to develop water resources web apps published in the peer-reviewed literature in the last decade (2004-2014).