Web based Community Environmental Monitoring

2010 Feb 03 12:01 NZDT

NIWA is considering a number of community environmental data acquisition and
monitoring projects. These have a wide range of common features which leads to
the idea that we could provide a generic system to support such projects.

I'm looking for software and tools that will assist in the construction of a
web based community environmental monitoring system.  The system has elements
of web content management system, Database 4GL, wiki, and web forms.

The underlying data models have a natural hierarchy
Places -> location -> measurements -> values

Each project gathers data about some type of place: Beaches, Estuaries, Lakes,
Rivers etc.
At each place measurements are taken at a location and form a time series
measurements follow a process and result in one or more readings or values.
values have a type and the data might be numbers, text or even photos or sound
files.

Each of these entities need to be definable in the system and have a set of
attributes: name, description, representation etc. so for example in beach
monitoring the group may wish to record just the name and location of the
beach, while in river monitoring they may wish to add the NZ Reach ID.

So defining a project involves defining the place type - and its attributes,
the measurement types, the value types. For each we would want user entry forms
and validation.

Ultimately all the data gathered ends up in a database and groups can view
reports, charts etc.

My team could write all this but I can't help feeling that something like this
flexible dynamic forms and data system must already exist. Either because
someone already built a flexible environmental data collection system, or
because it exists in some other parallel industry.

If I do find or build a solution for this do any other groups have use for such
a beast?

Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Regards Andrew

NIWA is the trading name of the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric
Research Ltd.