The environmental agencies responsible for assessments, forecasts, and warnings depend first and foremost on reliable observational and monitoring networks. NOAA's Strategic Plan calls for an identification of observational needs. The first step in that process should be the documentation of the existing monitoring and observing system. The global observing programs have called for performing a summary or inventory of observing systems. The task of assembling a user-friendly, easily- accessible description of the components of the existing observing system under one cover has not been done. There is no central location where one can turn to obtain a comprehensive treatment of the monitoring systems.
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. The result was often an out-of-date, hard-copy snapshot. This project is taking the important steps of making such a description available electronically, 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 product is called GEOGUIDE, for Global Environmental Observing Systems through GIS-User Interaction for Display and Evaluation.
The goal of the first phase of the project was to demonstrate the functionality of the system using a limited sample of metadata from an existing network, the Real Time Environmental Information Network and Analysis System, REINAS. The components of the GEOGUIDE system are: a metadata base, GIS software, Web server, and a software extension which allows the user to view maps and other information from a Web browser. Some of the demonstrated capabilities are:
Instrument collections at a particular site
Map of locations of a particular sensor type
Map overlays of different observation networks
Nearest observation site to a user-selected location