A tale of two observing systems: Opening windows to interoperability

Abstract

Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium's (LUMCON) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab's (DISL) Environmental Monitoring Systems are integrated into the regional Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) and the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). Since 1989, LUMCON's Environmental Monitoring System has collected and archived realtime meteorological and hydrographic data to provide a broad community of scientists, educators, students, and the public with quality-controlled environmental data from Louisiana's Gulf Coast. The data are freely available in real-time via the Internet. Four remote monitoring stations, located along the southeastern Louisiana coast, collect environmental data from an array of meteorological and hydrographical instruments. Starting in 2000, the Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) collaborated with LUMCOM to create the environmental monitoring system in Mobile Bay. The system includes three stations, Dauphin Island, Meaher Park, and Middle Bay Light. DISL also collects the data collected by two National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERRS) sites, Weeks Bay and Grand Bay, as well as 3 PORTS sites and an NDBC site in coastal Alabama. Our challenge was to design a monitoring system that fit the needs of our data users while maintaining the ability to adapt our systems to the IOOS standards, which were still being developed. “From the sensor to the web,” this is our focus. In 2000, we decided to mirror the two marine labs' monitoring systems after one another and create a “mini” coastal-ocean observing system. In order to achieve this goal the background and infrastructure had three main requirements. First, the data had to be collected and stored locally. The data had to be made available on the web within one minute of collection. Finally, the systems must be easily integrated into a larger system through the standards set forth by IOOS Data Management and Communications (DMAC). These two systems are mirrored to maintain autonomy while offering an integrated data sharing environment. Both systems collect data via Campbell Scientific Data loggers, store the data in Microsoft SQL servers, and disseminate the data in real-time on the World Wide Web via Microsoft Internet Information Servers and Active Server Pages (ASP). The utilization of Microsoft Windows technologies presented many challenges to these observing systems because open source tools were limited. The current open source tools often require the installation of additional software and/or hardware. Programmers from both systems have developed software to make their respective data available through common standards formats. Both systems provide data to the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). Both LUMCON and DISL developed in house programs to construct the NDBC XML format and push these data to NDBC via File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The NDBC then distributes the data to the NWS and others via its AWIPS system. NDBC also serves these data via an Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OpenDAP) with Network Common Data Format (NetCDF), server in NetCDF format. Within the last two years the two systems became part of the “Standardization of Local Data Nodes” project of the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association (GCOOS-RA). One of the requirements of this project was to install a Sensor Observation Services (SOS) compliant web service for serving the data. In researching available implementations of the SOS, we found that neither OOStethys nor IOOS Data Integration Framework version of Sensor Observation Service (IOOS-DIF SOS) offered a version that was seamlessly compatible with Microsoft Windows without installing additional services. Our challenge was to design an implementation of an SOS web service to serve our data without having to add additional programs and services to our current Microsoft Windows servers. With the assistance of the OOSTethsys development team, DISL implemented a cold fusion version of and LUMCON created an Active Server Pages (ASP) version of the OOSTethys implementation of SOS. Both systems' SOS servers are now registered with the IOOS Observation registry as well as other registries. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) continue to meet the needs of their users through innovation while maintaining the ability to adapt our systems to the developing IOOS standards.