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NARSTO Workshop on Innovative Methods for Emission Inventory Development and Evaluation University of Texas, Austin October 14-17, 2003 |
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An Integrated Fire, Smoke and Air Quality Network
Stefan Falke and Rudolf Husar
Washington University in St. Louis
Brooke Hemming
US EPA - Office of Research and Development
The management of fire, smoke, and air quality is tasked to multiple agencies at federal, state, and local levels. The diversity in data collection methods, data reporting requirements, data formatting schemes, data analysis methods, and data presentation create a daunting challenge for the integration of these data. However, integration of these heterogeneous datasets is precisely what is called for by federal and regional organizations in order to derive a more comprehensive understanding of forest fires, including particulate matter emissions, and their impacts.
Through a Digital Government project funded by the US EPA, the Forest Service and the NSF, Washington University in St. Louis and George Mason University are developing an innovative network using evolving web services technologies with the objectives of providing uniform web-based access to, cataloging of, and display of distributed fire related data for fire, smoke, and air quality managers. This paper presents the project´s progress to date.
The network uses software “middleware” components to link to and transform disparate data and offer them to end users through an easy-to-use web browser front end. The middleware components, based on web services and data standards, handle the data transformations and integration ‘behind the scenes´ and provide end users with the level of detail they desire; whether “raw” data or “value-added” information such as maps of fire locations or patterns of emissions. The data and tools included in the network are based on input from the user community.
The middleware components are built on the distributed Voyager (dVoy) infrastructure, a spatial-temporal framework that enables multi-dimensional data access and displays (i.e. maps and time series). The fire, smoke, and air quality network extends the dVoy infrastructure to accommodate new data types for fire and smoke applications and creates new web services for advanced fire-related data display and analysis.