AUSTIN, Texas, May 12 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've started an initiative to create the first comprehensive data management system for the nation's water supply.

The Hydrologic Information System, or HIS, is designed to supply the hundreds of municipal, state and federal agencies that control the nation's water resources with a common set of procedures for data collection, analysis, and reporting.

The project, led by Professor David Maidment of the University of Texas at Austin, was awarded a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Maidment will work in collaboration with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc., a joint effort among more than 100 universities.

Of the many existing hydrologic databases, "most … are incompatible with each other," said Ilya Zaslavsky of the University of California-San Diego, an architect of the HIS project. "Despite water being such a precious commodity … researchers still don't have an accurate assessment of just how much water we have as a nation, " he said.

The project is also expected to facilitate the study of climate models and the integration of data from geology, meteorology and related disciplines.