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  • 1. Introduction

1. Introduction

The use of acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) from a moving boat is a commonly used method for measuring streamflow. These measurements have been reviewed and post-processed using manufacturer supplied software and the user’s knowledge and experience to interpret the quality of the measurement, correctly configure discharge processing settings, and set appropriate thresholds to screen out erroneous data. This dependency on the software supplied by the manufacturer has created two problems for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
 
1.     The software supplied by the different manufactures have limited automated quality assessment features, and graphics and tables for user review are inconsistent among the manufacturers. Consequently, data quality assessment is not independent of the instrument used to make the measurement but rather is dependent on the capabilities of the manufacture supplied software to review and assess the data quality. The lack of automated quality assessment features leaves the assessment to the knowledge and experience of the user and may result in inconsistent assessments of data quality.
 
2.     Software from different manufacturers use different algorithms for various aspects of the data processing and discharge computation. Consequently, if the same dataset could be processed by each of the manufacturers’ software, the resulting discharges could be different.
 
Development of common and consistent computational algorithms combined with automated filtering and quality assessment of the data will provide significant improvements in quality and efficiency of streamflow measurements. This development will ensure that USGS streamflow measurements made using ADCPs are consistent, accurate, and independent of the manufacturer of the instrument used to make the measurement.
The USGS, Office of Surface Water developed a computer program, QRev. The program can be used to compute the discharge from a moving-boat ADCP measurement using data collected with any of the Teledyne RD Instrument (TRDI) or SonTek bottom tracking ADCPs. QRev applies consistent algorithms for the computation of discharge independent of the manufacturer of the ADCP. In addition, QRev automates filtering and quality checking of the collected data and provides feedback to the user of potential quality issues with the measurement. Various statistics and characteristics of the measurement, in addition to a simple uncertainty assessment are provided to the user to assist them in properly rating the measurement. QRev saves an extensible markup language (XML) file that can be imported into databases or electronic field notes software, such as, SVMobile.
 
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