Development of a User-friendly, Interactive Web Guide to In Situ Observing System Metadata Using GIS Technology

The environmental agencies responsible for assessments, forecasts, and warnings depend first and foremost on reliable observational and monitoring networks. With respect to observing capabilities, the Strategic Plan of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls for an identification of observational needs. NOAA is committed to providing greater access to its data, information, and product suite, including metadata about its observing systems. The objective of the project "Global Environmental Observing Systems through GIS-User Interface for Display and Evaluation (GEOGUIDE)" is to provide a Web-based guide to metadata for the major global observing systems utilizing the power of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.

The traditional approach to summarizing observing system information has been the production of a hard-copy catalog at the completion of an extensive period of data collection and compilation. GEOGUIDE has taken the important steps of making such a description available on the Web, providing interactive capability, and linking a multitude of observing systems to a common geographic base with GIS technology. This capability allows the user to develop customized geographic-related queries to obtain information about observing systems.

The components of the GEOGUIDE system are: a metadata base, GIS software, Web server, and a software extension which publishes GEOGUIDE maps to the Web. GIS technology provides a capability to store, analyze, retrieve, and display georeferenced data. GIS software by itself allows for an interactive query and analysis capability, which can be very powerful in the high-end applications. However, this power is available only to the user at the pc or work station. The Internet map server is the mechanism to place map and tabular products on the Web. To provide the user-friendly interactive capability which allows GEOGUIDE to fulfill its potential of simulating some of the GIS software routines requires customization of the map server, a non- trivial task. This customization is shown by an interactive demonstration by GEOGUIDE.