The history of ODMX

Around 2005 ODM (Observational Data Model) was developed as an information model for hydrological observations (see Horsburgh et al, 2008). ODM (also known as ODM v1) was not designed to deal with sample data and had some other deficiencies. This was the motivation behind the development of ODM2. This development was funded through a number of NSF grants. At the completion of these grants (around 2018, even though some work continued through 2019) a number of capabilities and components of the ODM2 infrastructure/ecosystem had been completed. These were (and are) all available through the ODM2 github repository.

Around 2017 Subsurface Insights decided to update their internally used geoscience information model. As Subsurface Insights staff had been involved (at a very modest level) with ODM2 it was decided to adopt ODM2.

After evaluation of the ODM2 ecosystem Subsurface Insights decided to only use the ODM2  information model, and to  develop their own  cyberinfrastructure to support the use of this datamodel. This development was done under a DOE SBIR award under which one of the prime contributors to ODM2 (Dr. Anthony Aufdenkampe at Limnotech) was a subcontractor.

As part of this effort a number of changes/enhancements were made the ODM2 information model. In order to differentiate what Subsurface Insight did from the ODM2 effort the name ODMX was adopted. While ODMX has substantially more tables than ODM2, many of the tables between ODM2 and ODMX are the same and the general philosophy behind ODMX is the same as that behind ODM2. Without ODM2 ODMX would not exist and we gratefully acknowledge the incredible work by the ODM2 team.

At the same time that ODMX was being developed ODM2 has remained in use (primarily for the Monitor My Watershed effort). In addition staff at Limnotech has forked ODM2 and has been enhancing and updating components of the ODM2 ecosystem in house. This is the so called ODM2.1 branch.

Over the last several years ODMX has been used (and is used) by Subsurface Insights in support of multiple DOE projects as well as a number of commercial projects. As Subsurface Insights staff feels that the capabilities developed with ODMX are of interest to a larger community and as public funds paid for the development of ODMX we decided  to release ODMX as open source. ODMX can be found on https://github.com/subsurfaceinsights/odmx.