A Data Warehouse Approach to Managing and Querying Environmental Data

Oral Presentation

Prepared by B. Shorr
NOAA, National Ocean Service/Office of Response and Restoration/Assessment and Restoration Division, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98115, United States


Contact Information: benjamin.shorr@noaa.gov; 206-526-4654


ABSTRACT

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment have generated unprecedented amounts of environmental data and analysis. As a trustee for Natural Resources, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration faced the challenge of managing and integrating datasets from many separate collection systems with varying levels of organization and documentation. Our team addressed this challenge by leveraging “Big Data” techniques and developing a data warehouse and information portal platform built with Open Source tools for ingesting, integrating and organizing information. This novel data warehouse and query approach is called DIVER (Data Integration, Visualization, Exploration, and Reporting) and provides scientists and decision makers the ability to filter and export diverse types of data and results. In addition to providing data management and sharing for the Deepwater Horizon Damage Assessment, the DIVER platform is part of the foundation for the Office of Response and Restoration's strategy to manage and share high quality environmental data across the country.