bomWater

This R package grabs data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Water Data online (http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/) via the WISKI API.

Several functions have been written to retrieve quality checked timeseries. These are:

• get_as_stored()
• get_hourly()
• get_daily()
• get_monthly()
• get_yearly()

The following Water Data Online variables can be accessed using these functions:

Parameter	Units
Water Course Discharge	m3/s
Water Course Level	m
Electrical conductivity at 25C	µS/cm
Turbidity	NTU
pH	pH
Water Temperature	ºC
Storage Volume	ML
Storage Level	m
Ground Water Level	m
Rainfall	mm
Evaporation	mm
Dry Air Temperature	ºC
Relative Humidity	%
Wind Speed	m/s

Make sure formatting of the parameter types is as in the table above when making requests. The function bw_parameters() can be used to retrieve this from within R.

Station information can be queried using get_station_list(), as in the example below.

The SOS2 manual can be consulted for the units of the different timeseries, as well as the meanings of the different quality codes (BoM WISKI manual).

Installation

# Install the development version from GitHub
devtools::install_github('buzacott/bomWater')

Copyright

All code is licensed MIT.

The license and copyright for the data can be viewed under the copyright tab at http://www.bom.gov.au/waterdata/. More information about the Bureau of Meteorology copyright can be found at http://www.bom.gov.au/other/copyright.shtml.

Examples

library(bomWater)

# Daily streamflow from Cotter River at Gingera (in m3/s)
cotter_river <- get_daily(parameter = 'Water Course Discharge',
                          station_number = '410730',
                          start_date     = '2020-01-01',
                          end_date       = '2020-01-31')

cotter_river
# A tibble: 31 x 3
   Timestamp           Value `Quality Code`
   <dttm>              <dbl>          <int>
 1 2020-01-01 00:00:00 0.013             10
 2 2020-01-02 00:00:00 0.013             10
 3 2020-01-03 00:00:00 0.011             10
 4 2020-01-04 00:00:00 0.009             10
 5 2020-01-05 00:00:00 0.01              10
 6 2020-01-06 00:00:00 0.015             10
 7 2020-01-07 00:00:00 0.023             10
 8 2020-01-08 00:00:00 0.019             10
 9 2020-01-09 00:00:00 0.017             10
10 2020-01-10 00:00:00 0.014             10
# … with 21 more rows

# Monthly total rainfall in mm at Cotter Hut
cotter_hut <- get_monthly(parameter = 'Rainfall',
                          station_number = '570946',
                          start_date     = '2019-01-01',
                          end_date       = '2019-12-31')
cotter_hut
# A tibble: 12 x 3
   Timestamp           Value `Quality Code`
   <dttm>              <dbl>          <int>
 1 2019-01-01 00:00:00  57.2             10
 2 2019-02-01 00:00:00  23.2             10
 3 2019-03-01 00:00:00  89.2             10
 4 2019-04-01 00:00:00  11.2             10
 5 2019-05-01 00:00:00 111.              10
 6 2019-06-01 00:00:00  44.8             10
 7 2019-07-01 00:00:00  38               10
 8 2019-08-01 00:00:00  50.8             10
 9 2019-09-01 00:00:00  50.8             10
10 2019-10-01 00:00:00  53.6             10
11 2019-11-01 00:00:00  41.2             10
12 2019-12-01 00:00:00   8               10

# Get a list of groundwater bore data available from water data online
get_station_list(parameter = 'Ground Water Level')
# A tibble: 4,439 x 5
   station_name station_no station_id station_latitude station_longitude
   <chr>        <chr>           <int>            <dbl>             <dbl>
 1 01/DD01 D    60930131       387998            -33.2              118.
 2 01/DD01 OB   60930132       388003            -33.2              118.
 3 01/DD04 S    60930135       388008            -33.2              118.
 4 02/DD25 OB   60930141       388013            -33.2              118.
 5 02/DD26 OB   60930142       388018            -33.2              118.
 6 02/DD27 OB   60930143       388023            -33.2              118.
 7 02/DD28 OB   60930144       388028            -33.2              118.
 8 02/DD29 OB   60930145       388033            -33.2              118.
 9 02/DD30 OB   60930146       388038            -33.2              118.
10 02/DD31 OB   60930147       388043            -33.2              118.
# … with 4,429 more rows

Design philosphy

• Intentionally designed to simplify requests and output. For fine control use make_Bom_request to construct your own calls
• Most requests are determined by a combination of station_number and parameter. If multiple values are allowed for these fields, the argument is pluralised e.g. station_numbers, parameters
• All 'get' functions always return a tibble (including single column response)
  • if there's no result, a zero-row tibble is returned
  • the columns will correspond to the values (and order) provided by 'return_fields'
    • the exception is 'custom_attributes', which I need to figure out how to deal with
  • request fields can also be included in the return fields???????
  • if multiple stations are requested and not all stations have returned a result a warning is raised
• metadata functions return a tibble by default, can return a vector with specific arguments
  • these functions need a naming convention:
    • bw_parameters
    • bw_interpolation_types
    • bw_return_fields
    • bw_quality_codes
• helper functions which extract a specific column are named with the prefix extract_ and return a vector
  • Not user facing
  • extract_data_owner
  • extract_timezone
  • extract_timeseries_id
• results and calls are always in snake_case (syntactic)
  • requests may also use title case? actually no, this just adds complexity
  • interaction with parameters: e.g. station_number and parameter are uniform, and converted to bom names before request
  • in general, outputs are based on what you see on bom water data online
  • show how to convert to sentene case in vignette