VIEWS

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General

Contact

Data System Name: VIEWS
Data System URL: http://vista.cira.colostate.edu/views/
Contact Person: Shawn McClure
Contact e-mail: [[Contactemail::mcclure@cira.colostate.edu]]

About the Data System (Purposes, Audience)

[[About::

The Visibility Information Exchange Web System (VIEWS) is an online decision support system developed to help federal land managers (FLMs) and states evaluate air quality and improve visibility in federally-protected ecosystems according to the stringent requirements of the EPA’s Regional Haze Rule and the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. VIEWS was recently selected by the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP), a collaboration of western states, tribes, and local agencies administered by the Western Governor’s Association and the National Tribal Environmental Council, to serve as the infrastructure for the WRAP Technical Support System (TSS). The TSS is an extended suite of analysis and planning tools designed to help planners develop long term emissions control strategies for achieving natural visibility conditions in Class I Areas by 2064. The architected combination of VIEWS and the TSS represents an integrated system that supports a unique synergy of national and regional air quality objectives by providing a consolidated, online system of data access and decision-making tools to planners, researchers, stakeholders, policy makers, and federal agencies across the nation.

(NOTE: Because the TSS was designed and built directly from the database, web, and software infrastructure VIEWS, and because the two individual systems together form an integrated decision support solution for a variety of air quality data, analysis, and planning needs, the two systems will be referred to as a either a single entity ("VIEWS/TSS") or individually ("VIEWS" or "TSS"), as appropriate to the subject being discussed.)

VIEWS/TSS employs an advanced data acquisition and import system to integrate data from several air quality data centers into a single, highly-optimized data warehouse. Ground-based measurements from dozens of monitoring networks, air quality modeling results, and detailed emissions inventories are imported and updated on a regular basis using a generalized, uniform data model and carefully standardized metadata. Names, codes, units, and quality flags from the source datasets are carefully mapped to a unified paradigm, and native formats and organizations are transformed into a common, normalized database schema. This design enables users to explore, merge, and analyze datasets of widely-varying origin in a consistent, unified manner with a common set of tools and web services. This degree of interoperability allows decision-makers to analyze diverse datasets side-by-side and focus on high-level planning strategies without having to contend with the details of data management and manipulation.

VIEWS/TSS users are typically asking questions of “What pollutants are impacting a given area?” and “Where are these pollutants coming from?” States are further mandated to answer the question of “What can be done to reduce these impacts?”, because the Regional Haze Rule requires states and tribes to develop implementation plans for reducing emissions and demonstrating reasonable progress towards doing so, and these plans must provide for an improvement during the 20% worst visibility days while also ensuring no degradation during the 20% best visibility days. To accomplish this, users must identify the pollutants, quantify their amounts, and determine the sources of anthropogenic emissions that contribute to this pollution on both the “best” and the “worst” visibility days in a given area. They must then determine available control measures for each source and evaluate these measures on the basis of costs, time, energy and environmental impacts, and the remaining life of the source. Planners then employ these analyses to make decisions about what controls to implement, to estimate projected improvements, and to track their progress in reaching these goals. The resulting decisions have obvious ecological impacts, but can also have important political and economic impacts in the sense that deciding which sources to control is a politically-significant issue and the process of controlling emissions and tracking progress costs money and takes time.

More information: About VIEWS;  About the TSS

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Presentation

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History

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Agencies

RPOs, NPS,WRAP, CIRA

Datasets Served

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Parameters

[[DataSystemParam::The integrated VIEWS database contains data for over 250 air quality variables and parameters. These include surface observations, modeled parameters, and emissions data. For a complete list of the parameters maintained for each individual dataset, please visit the VIEWS Query Wizard and note the information on the "Select Parameters" tab as you select various datasets.

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Spatial - Temporal Coverage

[[DataSystemCoverage::Currently, the datasets in VIEWS are mostly relevant to the United States and neighboring countries such as Canada and Mexico. For complete information on the geographical coverage of the various datasets in VIEWS, please visit the VIEWS Network Browser, which is an online tool that displays maps of the monitoring sites for each network. Future plans include the addition of various international datasets and global satellite data.

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Health

[[DataSystemAppHealth::Many of the datasets maintained by VIEWS are frequently used for health research and epidemiological studies. In particular, university researchers and state departments of health frequently visit VIEWS to download and/or analyze the various PM2.5 and Hazardous Air Pollutant (HAP) datasets maintained in the integrated database. A recent addition to VIEWS is the dataset from the NADP Mercury Deposition Network (MDN), and data from the NPS Ozone network is currently being added as well. The VIEWS team also developed and currently maintains the Air Toxics Data Archive (ATDA) for the EPA, which contains HAP, criteria pollutant, and other air toxics data.

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Forecasting and Reanalysis

[[DataSystemAppFcstReAnaly::The Regional Haze Rule (RHR) goals include achieving natural visibility conditions at 156 Federally mandated Class I areas by 2064. In more specific terms, that RHR goal is defined as (1) visibility improvement toward natural conditions for the 20% of days that have the worst visibility and (2) no worsening in visibility for the 20% of days that have the best visibility. One component of the states’ demonstration to EPA that they are making reasonable progress toward this 2064 goal is the comparison of modeled visibility projections for the first milestone year of 2018 with what is termed a uniform rate of progress (URP) goal. The 2018 URP goal is obtained by constructing a “linear glide path” (in deciviews) that has at one end the observed visibility conditions during the mandated five-year (2000-2004) baseline period and at the other end natural visibility conditions in 2064; the visibility value that occurs on the glide path at year 2018 is the URP goal. The TSS provides two online tools for helping states and tribes forecast future visibility conditions and their progress toward achieving natural visibility conditions by 2064. The Monitoring Glide Slope Tool allows users to view the glide slope information, and the Visibility Projection Tool displays RHR glide slope information in addition to model-based visibility projections for the 2018 reasonable progress milestone. Additional information on how the data in the VIEWS/TSS integrated database is used to project future visibility conditions and assess reasonable progress towards future visibility goals can be found in the TSS Air Quality Modeling document.

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Model/Emissions Evaluation

[[DataSystemAppModelEval::The TSS Model Performance Tool can be used to evaluate model performance on a site-by-site basis by comparing the 2002 modeling results to the IMPROVE monitoring data collected in 2002. A detailed description of how the TSS data and tools can be used for model evaluation can be found in the TSS Air Quality Modeling document.

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Characterization, Trends, Accountability

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Other

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Data System IT

Primary/Official Store for Some data

[[PrimaryDataStorage::VIEWS is the primary online source for data collected by the IMPROVE (Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments) aerosol and optical networks. VIEWS is also the primary source for the official Regional Haze Rule data that includes the baseline IMPROVE data with additional substituted data values and various data aggregations that have been calculated according to the EPA's Regional Haze Rule Guidance documents.

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Data Consolidation/integration

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Providing Data Access to users/externals

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Data Processing

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Visualization/Analysis

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Decision Support (e.g. some integration into user business process)

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End-to-End Integration

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Other DS Values

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Data Access and/or Output Interoperability

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Reusable Tools and Methods

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Security Barriers and Solutions

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User Feedback Approach

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Other Architecture

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