Information Systems: If you build it…will they come?
Session chair: Gordon Longsworth, College of the Atlantic GIS Lab
Session abstracts:
Environmental Geographic Analysis Database (EGAD) – Integration of an Enterprise Production Environmental Sampling Database with ArcMap and Google Earth
Christian Halsted and Richard Heath
Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Augusta, ME
EGAD is used by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection as a repository for environmental data generated through a variety of State and Federal programs. EGAD services programs including Solid Waste, Uncontrolled Sites, Petroleum Spill Remediation, Biological Monitoring and Ambient Toxic Monitoring. Currently approximately 6 million individual records of environmental data are stored in an Oracle production database. Associated spatial information is maintained in ESRI’s Spatial Database Engine (SDE). Spatial and production data is linked through common site and sample location identifiers allowing information from both systems to be passed to GIS applications.
A very flexible database design allows storage of data associated with groundwater, soil, surface water, porewater, landfill gas, air quality, macroinvertebrate and algae sampling. Department staff have developed numerous applications for importing, retrieving, analyzing, and displaying EGAD data. The use of Department owned application platforms (e.g. Microsoft Access, ArcMap and Citrix), freely available software (Google Earth and KML), focused commercial software packages (Grapher, Chemstat, Rockworks) and high level programming languages (e.g., Visual Basic) controls costs and allows Department database and GIS staff to respond efficiently to user needs.
The successful implementation of the EGAD tools has relied on the principles of simple modularity, direct user input, in-house programming, appropriate level of customization and project oversight by front-line users. We will discuss how these principles have delivered a robust spatial information system to DEP users and how we are currently working to provide this data and the analysis results to the public, consulting and regulated communities.
Development and Implementation of a Regionalized Stormwater Data Management and Inspection Program to Meet NPDES Phase II Permit Requirements: A Case Study of Collaborative Work Conducted by the Bangor Area Storm Water Group
Phil Ruck1, Eric Johns2, Wendy Warren3, & Brenda Zollitsch4
1 CES; Brewer, ME
2
Maine Air National Guard; Bangor IAP, ME
3
City of Bangor, Bangor, Maine
4
Bangor Area Storm Water Group, Portland, ME
This presentation will showcase a new model for regionalizing stormwater management data, inspections and inspection trainings, based on a successful collaborative program developed by the seven municipalities and three state-owned Municipal Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s) in the Bangor Urbanized Area.
Data management for stormwater management programs can be both costly and time-consuming for MS4s. In response to this ever-increasing burden, the members of the BASWG have undertaken grant-funded efforts to:
- Perform regionalized municipal infrastructure mapping to identify storm sewer system components as part of a GIS development process for the regulated MS4 entities in the BUA;
- Coordinate municipal staff trainings for all monitoring and inspection activities associated with the MS4 Program, including storm sewer system, illicit discharge detection, and construction activities;
- Develop a customized database management system for maintaining all of the monitoring and inspection data collected in the BUA to demonstrate MS4 General Permit compliance; and
- Develop a training program for all users of the system in the BUA.
These efforts are allowing regional MS4s to evaluate the effectiveness of their individual stormwater management plans while also addressing decision-making from local, watershed, regional and statewide perspectives.
This case study will discuss the results of these efforts and provide guidance for transferring this model to other regions. Discussion will include both the positive and negative aspects of the database system and training development process, potential areas for improvement, as well as future initiatives to expand the BASWG regionalization efforts.
Maine Water Atlas
Apoorv Gehlot1, Ivan Willig1, Gordon Longsworth1, Peter Vaux2
1 College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME
2 Mitchell Center for Environmental Research, UMaine, Orono, ME
Maine Water Atlas is an online resource to access multiple types and sources of lake- and watershed-specific data. The Atlas contains three primary components. Google Earth and ArcIMS interfaces provide access to spatially referenced data from the PEARL data bank (www.pearl.maine.edu). From these interfaces, the user can navigating to a lake or watershed and then click on links that lead to the associated Lake and Watershed Overview pages in PEARL. The overview pages provide background information about the spatial unit, dynamic data visualization and data extraction tools, and access to source data tables as well as bibliographic data specific to the spatial unit. A third component of the Atlas is a Forum for sharing ‘non-traditional’ or ‘experience-based’ information – also spatially referenced within the Atlas to lake and watershed codes. This information is of a type that typically does not reside in formal databases and thus tends to be relatively ‘invisible’. It nevertheless represents a potentially rich source of knowledge about Maine’s environment. With password-controlled access, site users can contribute information to the Forum via a simple user interface. The Forum is searchable by spatial unit, topic and date of post, and includes dynamically-generated mapping. The Forum will be launched pre-loaded with a rich set of information from a series of expert interviews conducted statewide by The Nature Conservancy, focusing on biodiversity and other facets of environmental quality in the state’s lakes and watersheds.
