87th AMS Annual Meeting

Monday, 15 January 2007
Storing and organizing ARM Program measurements documentation for data quality purposes
Exhibit Hall C (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
Kenneth E. Kehoe, CIMMS/Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; and R. A. Peppler, K. L. Sonntag, and S. T. Moore
Poster PDF (425.1 kB)
The analysis of ARM Program measurements for data quality requires adequate documentation to ensure that all analysts are fully informed of data characteristics, known issues and scheduled changes. To facilitate this need, the ARM Data Quality Office has implemented a Wiki system that documents such information. A Wiki is a powerful yet secure collaboration platform designed to provide users the ability to directly edit a web page via their web browser. This allows for instant updates from any registered user without the need for a web designer to perform the changes. Formatting syntax is simpler than standard HTML, allowing a person with no web programming experience to easily edit the web page. To provide data quality analysts with the information needed to accurately inspect and assess ARM data, the ARM Data Quality Office worked with ARM instrument mentors to create tailored guidance within the Wiki for each instrument. This information is stored in a format capable of providing both training for new analysts and reference information on known instrument issues. Also, lessons learned through analyst data inspection experience can be added immediately to the Wiki as new information. A key component of the Wiki web pages is their ability to display most image formats within the regular text of the page. This method of creating and displaying ARM measurement guidance has become an indispensable tool for depicting how an instrument failure may appear in data plots and what course of action should be followed to document and report the problem.

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