Water science software institute: an open source engagement process

We have conceptualized a public/private Water Science Software Institute (WSSI) whose mission is "to enable and accelerate transformative water science by concurrently transforming both the software culture and the research culture of the water science community". To achieve our goals, we have applied an Open Community Engagement Process (OCEP), based in large part on the principles and practices of Agile and Open Source software development. This manuscript describes the WSSI and the OCEP model we have developed to operationalize the WSSI.