Identify your must have federal data sets

2/3/2026

7 minute read

Environmental Engineering

Urgent call to EWRI members - Identify your must have federal data sets

Shirley Clark, Ph.D., P.E., BC.WRE, F.EWRI, F.ASCE

The Committee on Understanding the Federal Data Sets Used by EWRI Practitioners was established by the Governing Board in May 2025. The goal of the committee is to better understand the array of federal data sets that are used by our members to perform their jobs. EWRI, with its 22,000 members, encompasses a wide variety of specialty areas, each with its own needs. The goal is to provide EWRI leadership, the ASCE Board of Direction, and ASCE’s Government Relations a list and description of the data sets that our members have identified as being vital to their work. This information is intended to support effective communication to legislators, their staff, and administration officials by ASCE members and our Government Relations staff. Gathered information will be particularly valuable at Federal and State Legislative Fly-Ins – helping to convey why these data sets are so vital to the profession. The goal is to be proactive in this space, rather than reactive.

The committee needs your input. The survey is still available here. Even if you see your data sets listed here, we encourage you to fill it out to help expand the descriptions of why these data are important and where they are used. Your input also will help the committee understand which data sets are most critically needed.

While the number of responses to date have been limited, the responses have illustrated the variety of work that we do and the data sets upon which we rely. Also, several respondents identified the criticality of models for the design of infrastructure, including EPANET, SWMM, HEC-RAS, and HEC-HMS. The data set answers are as follows:

Data set responses

Agency	Data Name	Technical Use/ Reason
EPA	EJScreen	Technical assistance to brownfields communities for grant writing and identifying environmental risks
EPA	WOTUS	WOTUS data needs to be re-hosted with EPA's WATERS geo viewer
EPA	NEPAssist	Poor location search - unable to find simple locations (like Guam). Many data layers do not cover Alaska, Hawaii and the territories.
EPA & Others	EnviroAtlas	Needs updating and demographic layers have been disconnected. Technical assistance to brownfields communities
FEMA	National Flood Hazard Layer	Data are out of date. Fluvial flooding is represented but pluvial flooding is not. The website is often down, it is unreliably available.
FEMA	National Risk Index	Able to query county and census tract but not reservations
Landfire.gov - interagency	Vegetation Data, fuel data	Very useful for updating hydrology, analyze engineering
NASA	SAR Data	Need visualization support, and REST API Access to all SAR Data through NASA or USGS
NASA	MERRA-2	Pavement and bridge design
NASS	National Agricultural Statistics Service Censuses and Surveys	Identifying cost and value of agricultural production
National Water Quality Monitoring Council	Water Quality Portal	Critical for monitoring and manging the environment
NCBI	Basic Local Alignment Search Tool	Needed to deposit and search for short sequences associated with wastewater, soils, etc.
NCBI	BioProject	Journals require project sequence data to be deposited into this repository before publication
NOAA	Global Historic Climate Network	Identifying crop growth timing and water requirements; Daily data needed for temperature for pavement design.
NOAA	Atlas 14	Design precipitation and flood; hydrology analysis
NOAA	Atlas 15	Intensity needed to design pipes
NOAA	NOAA Historical tsunami database	Historical tsunamis that have occurred at project sites
NOAA	Tides & Currents	Design storm tide
NOAA	National weather model	Research and engineering decisions
NOAA (NCEI)	Enhanced Master Station History Report	Identification of weather station locations for pavement design
NRCS (USDA)	Web Soil Survey	Identifying soil suitability for irrigation and engineering design. Used for agro-ecosystem modeling, GHG studies, farm profitability, nutrient and pesticide calculations, irrigation scheduling and more
US ACE	National Inventory of Dams	Critical for managing water resources and flood-control
USDA	Census of Agriculture	Estimates of acres of crops, tillage, drainage, irrigation, crop yields, farm financial returns and more
USDA	CroplandCROS	Estimates of crop acres
USGS	StreamStats	Used for watershed delineation, flow metrics. Needs updating because there are still errors in flow paths.
USGS	3DEP Lidar point clouds and 1m DEMs	Expansive, high resolution DEMs incredibly useful for land surface models.
USGS	National water information system	Critical for analyzing flood frequency. Water availability and quality suitability for irrigated crops.
USGS	NWIS - US Water Data for the Nation	This is where all the flood and water quality data collected by the USGS resides.
USGS	Sparrow	Estimations of nutrient loss by watershed
USGS	Earth Explorer	Satellite and aerial imagery for determining irrigated lands and irrigation water use.
USGS	Bulletin 17C	Design river flood
USGS	Stream Gauges	Stream flow data for engineering, analysis