GIS System Design for the Coastal Storms Initiative Nazila Merati OAR/PMEL & OAR Representative to NOAA Enterprise GIS Chris Moore – OAR/PMEL Tiffany C. Vance – NMFS/AFSC

GIS brings together data layers and analysis GIS is used by scientists, emergency managers and planners to create data products make maps disseminate information in a timely manner Data that are georeferenced can be put into a GIS Municipalities are increasingly using GIS to store, disseminate and document land use changes, plan for emergencies and display their data

GIS efforts in NOAA GIS is being used within all NOAA LOs NOAA Enterprise GIS Working Group Established this year All NOAA LOs are represented PMEL and some other OAR Labs are providing data in a GIS format and distributing GIS products to users

GIS gaining acceptance by science community Science interest AMS IIPS GIS Session in Feb 2003 Significant NCAR atmospheric modeling GIS effort ESRI sponsored Marine Data Model for GIS science Benefits of GIS for science GIS increasingly useful for scientific computing GIS products – paper and electronic maps, maps, sophisticated analysis products and applications 3D Visualization Increasing sophistication in GIS technology allow users to start visualizing and distributing their data in 3D Support for scientific file formats netCDF to coverages, shapefiles for in-situ and gridded fields

Getting started with GIS - approaching the CSI project Who are your users? How will they access the data? Desktop? Web? Field applications? Are the data static? Real time? Will the users be adding their own data? Do you want a to provide a enhanced presentation of your data? Any solution requires this information

OAR Case Studies PMEL Tsunami Inundation Mapping Effort (TIME) program (OAR/PMEL) Cordell Bank (NOS/National Marine Sancturaries) ShipTracker (OAR/NMAO) Other OAR applications NSSL, GLERL, OE, ARL

TIME – GIS supporting Tsunami Hazard System Tsunami Inundation Mapping Effort (TIME) program Creating products for use by emergency managers in five states from model output Involves ingesting data from municipalities, NOAA, model output, observational data Data products are maps, both static and live

TIME Demo ArcView Projects with data products are distributed to Emergency Managers

Live Maps for Hazards ESRI Live MapServer allows users to click on and off layers to look at census data, inundation and hazards information Interlayer calculations as an added feature

TIME Capabilities TIME is able to both ingest data from different institutions and to provide data products back to the states in a format that is commonly used by emergency planners and city officials Data are easily converted to a GIS format Very detailed metadata should make the end user confident about the quality of the data they are about to use

TIME Limitations Data can be hard to reformat, often metadata are missing or not available Hard to convince scientists that users need the data in format that is easily imported into an ArcGIS project Requires learning how to use new software to create GIS projects

Cordell Bank – Creating a GIS-based Visualization Project NOS NMS program is reassessing the management of the Cordell Bank Sanctuary PMEL was approached to create visualizations for use by sanctuary managers

Cordell Bank Data Layers GIS layers from NMS – bathymetry, topography, satellite imagery CTD data from NMFS Hydroacoustic data from NMFS Data mapped in ArcGIS, distributed and visualized using VRML

Cordell Visualization GIS products visualized in 3D e.g. isosurfaces, fencelines

Cordell Application Application allows users to turn off and on layers, move through data More complicated time steps are being implemented

Cordell Capabilities Portable visualizations allow users to inspect their data in more than 2 dimensions Biological model data combined with physical data layers reveals processes interactions Data easily disseminated as visualizations and imported into desktop GIS system Visualizations can be viewed using free software such as CosmoPlayer

Cordell Limitations Additional data collection can be costly, but since its already being collected,you may as well display it Metadata may not be complete Not everyone wants to look at the world in a 3 and 4 D display

ShipTracker- Real time tracking using GIS Provides real time access to ship locations, now being used with marine mammals and drifting objects JAVA/JSP front end to a GIS back end

ShipTracker Capabilities Real time tracking of moving objects New Technology allows for quicker map updating Allows projects to display information that they want to

Visualization Capabilities at PMEL PMEL has extensive visualization capabilities ranging from the I-Desk to the desktop Ability to ingest GIS formats and standard scientific formats (EPIC, Ferret netCDF files) Portable projects allow scientists to view data and add their own data to the visualization

PMEL Visualization Emergency managers use visualizations for public outreach and teaching tools Easily distributed as animations, VRML, quicktime movies, added to GIS projects

How would we approach CSI GIS is an essential component for CSI Process Identify CSI ingest and output needs Build data conversion routines if they don’t already exist Determine if the data are better suited for a GIS RDBMS or a simpler database Create data delivery mechanism that allows users to get data for use on their own desktop or via the web Create the appropriate metadata to make data more understandable to end users Determine how data will mesh with the pre-existing municipal and NOAA layers Build a GIS that will allow for expansion as it grows, using current scalable technologies