Remediation-data Collection Supports Environmental Quality Part 2: The Benefits of A Data-integrating Software
By: John Defina, Izak Maitin, and Arnold L. Gray
The NJDEP has selected EQuIS for Windows as the environmental data-management system for storing and accessing data.
The department uses a set of procedures and import routines to evaluate the quality of data submitted by the regulated community. Data that pass the quality checks go to SRP staff. Submissions that fail are rejected, requiring resubmission.
The regulated community may submit data
- created using the department's Hazsites* tool;
- produced in other applications (such as spreadsheet and database programs); or
- delivered in digital format by the laboratory and subsequently submitted by the contractor (this is most likely for large projects)
Other software tools have been coordinated to track data submissions, move data through the organization, and preserve the meta-data associated with data deliverables.
Once in the EQuIS system, large volumes of chemical data may be combined with other site-specific information such as geological and hydrological data. Additionally, users may organize constituent groups, locations, and regulatory limits to support the analysis of data over a particular site or group of sites.
The system, for example, allows a project manager to group shallow monitoring wells to evaluate all VOCs above a particular cleanup level. Such aggregating of data is critical to investigating site conditions.
GIS is a powerful tool for evaluating site data. However, the cost/benefits of applying GIS may raise concerns without a sound strategy for quality issues, version control, and accessing stored data.
Using the EQuIS-ArcView interface,** managers can quickly and seamlessly retrieve data for a project or set of projects. Ancillary project information, such as location groupings and regulatory thresholds, is available through the interface provided that it has been incorporated within the data-management system.
Project data are refreshed each time the ArcView interface is invoked. Sampling location presentations, for example, are based upon stored coordinates. Data changes thusly are accommodated.
Support for data evaluation is through a custom GUI or through standard ArcView functions. Experienced programmers can readily develop their own ArcView tools using the data tables provided within the interface since there is open-system support.
The system allows data to be stored in a common repository that is integrated with a variety of third-party tools (such a Surfer, Stratos, GMS, LogPlot) and various statistical packages. Because of this, results from non-GIS tools that bear coordinate information can be smoothly recombined within the ArcView interface. In addition, non-spatial results capable of being displayed by ArcView may be linked to site features.
Accessing a common repository containing the most recent data ensures that users are working with the same data and using the same conventions.
It also is possible from within a GIS to review and compare results created with the disparate tools that resource managers have long relied on for decision support. By integrating these tools and their results with "live" data, each becomes more valuable to the decision-making process.
The last installment of this article will cover EQuIS use for developing environmental indicators.
*The NJDEP distributes the Hazsites data-entry program to facilitate the entry of site data.
**The interface is a fully integrated product capable of connecting to any project supported by EQuIS.