projects > south florida information access (SOFIA) metadata, data delivery, EDEN geospatial system, and website > work plan
U.S. Geological Survey, Greater Everglades Priority Ecosystems Science (GE PES)Fiscal Year 2007 Study Work PlanStudy Title: South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) Metadata, Data Delivery, EDEN Geospatial System, and Website Funding History: FY98; FY99; FY00; FY01; FY02; FY03; FY04; FY05; FY06; FY07 Principal Investigator(s): Heather Henkel Overview & Objective(s): The South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) system was created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1995. Its mission is to provide easy access to information about research projects and products generated as part of USGS South Florida Priority Ecosystems Studies (PES) and other Federal, state, and local science providers. SOFIA provides this service by integrating information systems and tools enabling efficient storage, organization, and search and retrieval of scientific information about the south Florida ecosystem. SOFIA was designed to benefit three major user groups: USGS program managers and scientists working with South Florida PES, managers and scientists working for other organizations involved with Everglades restoration, and members of the public interested in USGS research and/or the science behind the Everglades restoration effort. SOFIA is an evolving and dynamic system that builds on the ever-increasing sophistication of new information technology. The current architecture consists of four integrated components: website, data, metadata, and the soon to be released internet map server (IMS). The SOFIA website (http://sofia.usgs.gov/) contains links to project descriptions, proposals, publications, data (through links to our data exchange site), metadata, presentations, and contact information, as well as general interest items, including photographs and posters. In addition, the SOFIA team has worked with outside agencies (such as the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge) to post related material on the site. Specific Relevance to Major Unanswered Questions and Information Needs Identified: Status: In the past year, the SOFIA website has continued to post all relevant south Florida information, including project proposals, work plans, summary sheets, status reports, publications, data, metadata, as well as project and personnel information. SOFIA continues to increase the amount of information that is provided on the website. The SOFIA website currently contains over 8900 documents. SOFIA also continues to see an increase in the number of visitors from just under 80 per day in 1998 to over 6000 in 2006. Recent Products: In January of 2004, SOFIA started producing SOFIA News. SOFIA News is a bimonthly email update of new postings on the SOFIA website. These updates include announcements of new publications and data sets, new and continuing project information, notification of upcoming meetings, as well as other related information. Currently, SOFIA News has grown to over 330 subscribers. SOFIA continues to provide support for the A.R.M Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge Enhanced Water Quality Monitoring and Modeling Program website. This website, available at http://sofia.usgs.gov/lox_monitor_model/, contains information about the program, reports, quarterly updates, and links to other related information. We will continue to work with the Program to post relevant and related information for their site. The amount of content continued to increase during the past year, including additions to our data exchange site, publications, project pages, and other related content. SOFIA now provides access to over 70 GB of data and 8900 documents. SOFIA presented several poster sessions including: the first Scientific Information Management Workshop held in Reston, Virginia in March of 2006, a USGS Open House, and the 2006 Greater Everglades Ecosystem Restoration (GEER) Conference. In June of 2006, Heather Henkel joined the U.S. Geological Survey's Web Metrics Working Group (WMWG). The WMWG is a small group that collects and analyzes web metric data for the entire USGS and provides information to managers to help improve the effectiveness of USGS web content in accomplishing USGS mission goals and satisfying customers. As part of this effort, SOFIA's web logs were provided to that they are now included along with the consolidated statistics for all USGS websites. Ever since SOFIA data was included with the combined statistics, SOFIA ranks within the top 25 off all USGS websites both in number of requested pages as well as the amount of data downloaded. Planned Products:
WORK PLAN Title of Task 1: SOFIA Web Portal Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: Specific Task Product(s): Updates to the entire site (publications, data, metadata, staff and project information) will continue throughout the year. Enhancements to the SOFIA publications database will continue. Title of Task 2: SOFIA Data Dissemination Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: Work will continue with the addition of new data records including those from USGS publications. In FY07, we will be adding layers produced from the EDEN project (see task five for more information). In addition, the data exchange site will be enhanced so that access between the data sets and metadata files is more accessible. Specific Task Product(s): We will continue to add all new and existing available datasets. Title of Task 3: SOFIA Metadata Maintenance Access to Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)-compliant metadata is made available through the five outlets: the SOFIA site (http://sofia.usgs.gov/metadata), a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) node, the Federal Geographic Data (FGDC) website, the Federal Geospatial One-Stop website (Geodata.gov), and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) website. This task will oversee the maintenance of existing SOFIA metadata records as well as the creation of new records. Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: Work planned involves updating as much of the metadata for existing SOFIA projects as possible. The metadata will be generated using COTS software (SMMS from Intergraph Corp.) and processed through the metadata parser to ensure compliance with the FGDC metadata standard. Specific Task Product(s): New and updated metadata records. This includes recreating all metadata records that were initially created for the IMS which were either incorrect or outdated. Title of Task 4: SOFIA Internet Map Server (IMS) Development Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: Work had begun on the SOFIA IMS but was delayed due to time constraints and delays in purchasing hardware for the production server. Work will continue on the development of the IMS with the intent of producing the first version in early FY07. Once an initial version is ready for review, a usability study will be conducted to see how user-friendly the site is. Once that is completed, we will work with other projects to populate the geospatial library with background data layers from existing data layers, develop data layers representing the location of USGS data collection sites and published USGS products, such as geologic contour maps. Work will also be coordinated with the EDEN project in FY07 for posting materials related to that project. This will include IMS development and GIS layer creation. Specific Task Product(s): SOFIA Internet Map Server (IMS), creation of appropriate GIS layers. Title of Task 5: EDEN Website, Data, and Database Management The information from EDEN will be made readily available to scientists, engineers, and water-resource managers through a website that integrates the real-time monitoring data and GIS model results. The purpose of the website will be to integrate EDEN monitoring and modeling data and provide one-stop shopping for data with a consistent data format and documentation. The EDEN website will be accessed through an interactive map showing the location of gaging stations in the network, and provides clickable access to gage data on a near real-time basis (generally within 24 hours). Data from water-level gages are transmitted by way of radio or satellite telemetry to the operating agency's data servers. Data from BCNP, ENP, and SFWMD are then transferred to the USGS and entered into the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) database. Once in NWIS, the data will be made available through the database-driven EDEN-NWIS web interface (http://sofia.usgs.gov/eden, currently under development) where the data can be accessed as graphs, tables, or downloadable files. The EDEN website will also provide station information, such as station descriptions (including NAVD 88 correction values), measured ground elevation, and vegetation in the vicinity of the gaging station. Ground-elevation and water-surface data as well as monitoring data for the Greater Everglades will also be available on the EDEN website. The generated maps of attributes for the EDEN grid will be stored at the South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) website data server (http://sofia.usgs.gov) for retrieval by way of a specially created, PC-based EDEN user interface (EDENapps). EDENapps is a downloadable utility to the user's desktop computer and offers two main features that allow users the ability to: (1) communicate with the server to obtain water-surface data, and (2) view, analyze, and format these data for their use. Initially, the interface is used to specify an area and dates of interest. These maps are collected from the SOFIA data storage server by the interface and displayed as an animation of water level over the specified period. The user then has options for examining the data in the interface, performing further analysis of the data within the interface, or exporting the data for external analysis and reports. Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures: Specific Task Product(s):
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U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
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Last updated: 11 July, 2008 @ 11:14 AM(TJE)