Environmental Data Store: Design And Implementation

In this paper we present the design and implementation of the Environmental Data Store (EDS). We also highlight the Environmental Thesaurus Server (EnvThs), a controlled vocabulary service application developed by us, providing semantic support on submission and search within EDS. With the rapid growth in data volumes, data diversity and data demands from multi-disciplinary research effort, data management has become a challenge as has the access to diverse but related data for example the context of a project. The EDS is based on the idea to store the 6 data types researchers are likely to encounter in 6 dedicated nodes, coupled via common metadata catalogue and a single web-based access interface, which is built on the DRUPAL platform. Using open source software only the EDS provides repository services for the six fundamental data types: a) Time Series Data, b) GeoSpatial data, c) Digital “Any” Data, d) Ex-Situ Sampling data, e) Modeling Data, and f) Raster Data. Discovery of data in the EDS is supported by the careful definition of common metadata fields supplemented by node specific metadata in support of publication venues such as WaterOneFlow web services for the CUAHSI ODM node. We have placed special emphasis on the semantic needs, i.e. built a support environment in which we attempt to provide a common set vocabularies in addition to some crosswalks between them. The EnvThs provides access to controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies widely used and recognized in geoscience/environmental informatics community. We use the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) for implementation deploying TemaTres, an open-source, web-based thesaurus management package and have also set up a SPARQL endpoint for programmatic access.