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

Not Given

History

n/a

Agencies

[[DataSystemAgencies::RPOs, NPS, WRAP, CIRA]]

Datasets Served

[[DataSystemDataSets::

Program	Freq	Start	End	Records	Updated
AQS Fine Mass FRM (D)	Daily	01/01/1999	12/31/2003	798317	04/13/2004
AQS Fine Mass FRM (H)	Hourly	01/01/1999	12/31/2003	7028023	04/13/2004
AQS Fine Speciation (D)	Daily	02/09/2000	12/31/2006	6839576	05/24/2007
AQS PM10 - Daily	Daily	01/01/1994	12/31/2003	1121497	07/30/2004
CASTNet Dry Chemistry	Weekly	01/06/1987	03/23/2005	793290	11/23/2005
CASTNet Visibility Chemistry	Daily	10/25/1993	12/27/2001	166950	03/11/2004
GAViM	Daily	05/31/1994	01/07/2001	65366
IMPROVE Aerosol (Preliminary)	Daily	8/1/2006	2/26/2007	660492	08/31/2007
IMPROVE Aerosol (Raw)	Daily	03/02/1988	7/31/2006	10804852	08/31/2007
IMPROVE Coarse Mass Speciation Study	Daily	03/01/2003	07/29/2003	444
IMPROVE Nephelometer	Hourly	01/01/1993	06/30/2007	13839744	10/09/2007
IMPROVE Aerosol (RHR1)	Daily	01/01/1988	12/31/2004	7220634	12/12/2005
IMPROVE Aerosol (RHR2) (New Algorithm)	Daily	01/01/1988	12/31/2005	4861358	03/09/2006
MOHAVE	Daily	01/10/1992	09/02/1992	106484
NADP/AIRMoN	Weekly	09/23/1992	02/15/2004	281505	06/04/2004
NADP/Mercury Deposition Network (MDN)	Weekly	11/22/1995	09/28/2004	109820	03/30/2005
NADP/Nation Trends Network (NTN)	Weekly	07/05/1978	02/03/2004	4824603
Navaho Generating Station (NGS)	Daily	03/04/1992	05/30/1992	701	04/02/2004
NPS SFU Aerosol	Daily	07/27/1979	11/13/1993	850126	03/02/2004
PREVENT	Daily	06/21/1990	09/03/1990	58547
REVEAL	Daily	04/20/1994	06/17/1995	9618	04/02/2004
SEARCH All Variables	Daily	05/01/1998	3/31/2005	438650	02/13/2006
SEARCH Best Estimate	Daily	05/01/1998	3/31/2005	153416	02/13/2006
SEARCH FRM	Daily	05/01/1998	3/31/2005	153392	02/13/2006
SEAVS	Daily	07/15/1995	08/25/1995	3564

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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

Not Given

Providing Data Access to users/externals

Not Given

Data Processing

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Visualization/Analysis

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

Not Given

End-to-End Integration

Not Given

Other DS Values

Not Given

Data Access and/or Output Interoperability

Not Given

Reusable Tools and Methods

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Security Barriers and Solutions

Not Given

User Feedback Approach

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Other Architecture

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