The main objective of marine environmental data management is the setting of technical and scientific bases for querying and viewing such data for monitoring and investigation purposes. The key element to promote integration among scientist and between scientists and environmental managers is a shared data bank to make easily available via Internet browser the stored data sets. In the frame of the SAM Project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, two elements have been put together to support Integrated Coastal Monitoring: an operational infrastructure at sea and a software infrastructure in the data management centre. The former is composed of a network of automatic coastal platforms connected via GSM technology for real time monitoring and a boat for in situ data collection and analysis, the latter, called SAM-BA, is composed of a RDBMS for data storing and querying, a dynamic web portal for worldwide data distribution with graphing capabilities and a computer cluster for data analysis. The SAM database manages: i) automatic meteoceanographic and water quality data; ii) data from lab analyses on water, sediment and biota; iii) vertical CTD profiles and surface data collected by underway systems; v) marine biodiversity data, in form of lists of species and abundances. Automatic data flow along the following path: after collection by platforms they are sent via SMS in form of encoded e-mails automatically forwarded to the data centre. There e-mails are parsed and data are decoded for storing in the database. For loading non-automatic data different origin-specific clients are currently under development. In the final stage the data are published on the web by an Internet portal which queries the database with user defined criteria. The database is designed focusing on environmental data as key-part of the whole analysis process; the database structure can be thought as a main table storing environmental data, with a set of linked tables which specialize the first one by adding information about time and space, measurement units, project, campaign, etc. A quick data reliability test compliant with the MAST Code on Data Quality is performed during the mail parsing to allow the realtime display of checked data. A cluster of Linux workstation running LAM/MPI parallelized software is then used to speed up a second and more precise quality check on the overall data set taking into account averages and standard deviations of each parameter. The final quality rate is then available as attribute for web queries. A web portal has been developed to explore data using all of the specializing information such as the time-window or the depth-window, the parameter, the producer (project/researcher) etc. according to the interests of the user. Once selected, the suitable data set can be exported as a formatted text file for spreadsheet importing. It is also possible to graph the queried data using the graph tools provided by the web portal. Graphs can be built using a multiple parameters search and can be plotted in form of time series or vertical profiles with a specific scale unit for every parameter. Graphs can be also customized by specifying lines colours and drawing styles. Web portal is built on the HTTPS protocol for secure data exchange.
A dynamic web portal for Integrated Coastal Monitoring
A Bergamasco
2004
Abstract
The main objective of marine environmental data management is the setting of technical and scientific bases for querying and viewing such data for monitoring and investigation purposes. The key element to promote integration among scientist and between scientists and environmental managers is a shared data bank to make easily available via Internet browser the stored data sets. In the frame of the SAM Project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research, two elements have been put together to support Integrated Coastal Monitoring: an operational infrastructure at sea and a software infrastructure in the data management centre. The former is composed of a network of automatic coastal platforms connected via GSM technology for real time monitoring and a boat for in situ data collection and analysis, the latter, called SAM-BA, is composed of a RDBMS for data storing and querying, a dynamic web portal for worldwide data distribution with graphing capabilities and a computer cluster for data analysis. The SAM database manages: i) automatic meteoceanographic and water quality data; ii) data from lab analyses on water, sediment and biota; iii) vertical CTD profiles and surface data collected by underway systems; v) marine biodiversity data, in form of lists of species and abundances. Automatic data flow along the following path: after collection by platforms they are sent via SMS in form of encoded e-mails automatically forwarded to the data centre. There e-mails are parsed and data are decoded for storing in the database. For loading non-automatic data different origin-specific clients are currently under development. In the final stage the data are published on the web by an Internet portal which queries the database with user defined criteria. The database is designed focusing on environmental data as key-part of the whole analysis process; the database structure can be thought as a main table storing environmental data, with a set of linked tables which specialize the first one by adding information about time and space, measurement units, project, campaign, etc. A quick data reliability test compliant with the MAST Code on Data Quality is performed during the mail parsing to allow the realtime display of checked data. A cluster of Linux workstation running LAM/MPI parallelized software is then used to speed up a second and more precise quality check on the overall data set taking into account averages and standard deviations of each parameter. The final quality rate is then available as attribute for web queries. A web portal has been developed to explore data using all of the specializing information such as the time-window or the depth-window, the parameter, the producer (project/researcher) etc. according to the interests of the user. Once selected, the suitable data set can be exported as a formatted text file for spreadsheet importing. It is also possible to graph the queried data using the graph tools provided by the web portal. Graphs can be built using a multiple parameters search and can be plotted in form of time series or vertical profiles with a specific scale unit for every parameter. Graphs can be also customized by specifying lines colours and drawing styles. Web portal is built on the HTTPS protocol for secure data exchange.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
