Community Air Quality Data System Vision and Objectives

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Community Air Quality Data System Vision and Objectives

Vision:

A sustainable, structured network of interconnected multi-organizational air quality data integration and analysis systems providing users ability to:

A) query data across temporal, spatial and composition (chemical species or physical property) frames; and B) create tabular and graphical analyses serving a variety of user defined environmental and health welfare assessment needs

System Attributes:

• Well documented and revised (iteratively) meta data information accompanying data sources
• Standardized, open data interface web based formats and protocols compatible with standard (GEOSS) conventions
• Access to a variety of data sources including routine surface based air quality observations, total column satellite data, emissions and modeling results
• Data harmonization of disparate information sources is enhanced through integration processes
• Minimization of redundancies; existing for well defined purposes

Objectives:

• High level objectives (reason for having a community data system) include support for a variety of air quality related assessments including, but not limited to:
  • Model evaluation
  • Trends and accountability
  • Exposure and health effects studies
  • Ecosystem effects
  • Air quality management
  • Air quality forecasting and public health warnings
• increase awareness of available air quality information through facilitating data interoperability
• reducing burden of data acquisition and sub-setting operations to shift resources toward data interpretation and analysis
• increase data quality and value through exposure to broad user communities
• guide EPA in planning and modifications to existing and emerging air quality data repositories and air quality data integration systems
• Leverage existing system attributes to improve overall data systems effectiveness and efficiencies by reducing redundancies and increasing user community access

Additional Context:

Air quality and related data are used for a variety of environmental assessments relevant to understanding the roles of air pollutants on human and environmental health and consequent improving of environmental states. Several events over the last decade have increased the need for access to and integration of a variety of disparate data sets. These events include, among many, of GEOSS, a community model of organizations and data systems addressing environmental assessments, the National Academy Sciences 2004 study on Air Quality Management – encouraging integration across pollutant categories, environmental media and temporal and spatial scales; assessments conducted by the task force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants (HTAP); enhanced collaborations across atmospheric and health effects science and operations communities generated by an explosion of particulate matter research and regulatory programs; an increase in space based observations with relevance to boundary layer air quality assessments; and numerous observation strategies developed in the U.S. and internationally. While the scientific and technical basis evolves rapidly to address modern environmental assessment needs; the attending collaborations, data harmonization and integration can be enabled by information technology solutions or compromised by lack of adequate attention to data systems interoperability.

Organizations have well defined missions that may not resonate well with another organization, yet there very likely is a shared need for basic underlying air quality data. Accordingly, the focus of the community data system addresses the basic raw data systems and systems that mange the movement, integration and relatively basic operations related to data passing and visualization. It is expected that individual organizations have terminal data analysis/presentation requirements fairly specific to their decision making needs. Consequently, this community system should be viewed as attending to data repositories (e.g., AQS, DataMart, CASTNET, NASA DAACS) and objective (i.e., short of specific analyses tailored to decision making needs) integration and visualization systems. In other words, there is no intent to cover the entire spectrum of data manipulations that end users desire, but to focus on a core of the basic data base and data integration systems feeding unlimited downstream mission specific decision support systems.

Process:

The community data system efforts have been catalyzed by a series of GEOSS related activities, including guidance generated by the GEOSS data and architecture committees, development of the ESIP DataFed community air data system umbrella, and a variety of agency sponsored GEOSS funded projects such as EPA’s advanced monitoring initiative (AMI). A February, 2008 air quality data summit in RTP, NC brought together a community of atmospheric, health, IT air quality management scientists and managers to begin strategizing a community air quality data system, the subject of this subsequent effort. A related air quality community cyberinfrastructure RFA funded through EPA GEOS AMI is under development to address some many interoperability concepts, using model evaluation for hemispheric transport as a test case. Internally, EPA-OAQPS is conducting an internal systems assessment to better position EPA data systems in a broader community system.