Environmental Data Management Research Articles

Application of Product Data Technology Standards to LCA Data

Applications of information and communications technology (ICT) for the management of environmental data, if used during the design and at the end of the product life cycle, can improve the environmental performance of products. This specific application of ICT for data management is called product data technology (PDT) and is based on the use of international standards developed by ISO TC184/SC4. PDT enables the computerized representations of information about products, processes, and their properties that are independent of any proprietary computer system or software application. The standard product data models are designed to integrate the necessary information about materials used in the product, and such information can be accessed and used at any point in the life cycle, from design to disposal. In the article, we present how PDT can support life cycle assessment (LCA) by focusing on a series of standards for communicating data for design and manufacture and standards for business and commercial information. Examples of possibilities for using PDT and semantic web for LCA data are introduced. The findings presented here are based on DEPUIS (Design of Environmentally-Friendly Products Using Information Standards), a project aimed at improving the eco-design of new products and services through the innovative use of new information standards.

Moving On: When It Is Time to Re-archive

Data archives are built to last a lifetime. More than a lifetime. They are in place to protect all the data that man and machine create. And yet, today, the archiving storage technology itself is rushing ever faster into obsolesce and every year it becomes more difficult to move this Archived information into the next generation of storage and support expanding requirements for accessibility. The evolution of storage media used to be measured in years, now it is measured in months. So how do you plan for migrating exponentially increasing amounts of data [1] when the subsequent data migration may have to begin even before the current migration is complete?Planning a tiered data storage paradigm shift was never easy even when there was sufficient time to review options; to select the proper next step in what must be a never ending cycle of legacy data protection. But when time is short (and growing shorter), there must be migration strategies and methods established to provide not only for the next migration, but also setting the stage for all subsequent migrations. Considering strategies for migrating “like-technologies”, such as disk-to-disk or server-to-server, can often be staggered to avoid a more massive disruptive migration.But when a migration requires the core Data Management Archive Software (DMAS) technology be replaced, the impacts ripple across the total tiered data architecture with the potential to impact the user community relying on that data.This paper explores aspects of strategies about how a Tiered Data Management Environment (TDME) facing the prospect of replacing the underlying DMAS should design an approach for converting and re-casting the archive.

Components of an environmental observatory information system

Recently, an initiative within the hydrologic science and environmental engineering communities has emerged for the establishment of cooperative, large-scale environmental observatories. Scientists’ ability to access and use data collected within observatories to address broad research questions depends on the successful implementation of cyberinfrastructure. In this paper, we describe the architecture and functional requirements for an environmental observatory information system that supports collection, organization, storage, analysis, and publication of hydrologic observations. We then describe a unique system that has been developed to meet these requirements and that has been implemented within the Little Bear River, Utah environmental observatory test bed, as well as across a nation-wide network of 11 similar observatory test bed sites. The components demonstrated comprise an observatory information system that enables not only the management, analysis, and synthesis of environmental observations data for a single observatory, but also publication of the data on the Internet in simple to use formats that are easily accessible, discoverable by others, and interoperable with data from other observatories.

ASIS&T research data access and preservation summit: Conference summary

ASIS&T research data access and preservation summit: Conference summary

ArrayTrack: a free FDA bioinformatics tool to support emerging biomedical research -- an update

ArrayTrack™is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bioinformatics tool that has been widely adopted by the research community for genomics studies. It provides an integrated environment for microarray data management, analysis and interpretation. Most of its functionality for statistical, pathway and gene ontology analysis can also be applied independently to data generated by other molecular technologies. ArrayTrack has been undergoing active development and enhancement since its inception in 2001. This review summarises its key functionalities, with emphasis on the most recent extensions in support of the evolving needs of FDA's research programmes. ArrayTrack has added capability to manage, analyse and interpret proteomics and metabolomics data after quantification of peptides and metabolites abundance, respectively. Annotation information about single nucleotide polymorphisms and quantitative trait loci has been integrated to support genetics-related studies. Other extensions have been added to manage and analyse genomics data related to bacterial food-borne pathogens.

Nitrate Contamination in Silver Springs: Feasibility Study for Expansion of Silver Springs Regional Wastewater Collection System and Treatment Plant

Nitrate Contamination in Silver Springs: Feasibility Study for Expansion of Silver Springs Regional Wastewater Collection System and Treatment PlantMarion County received a Community Budget Issue Request (CBIR) Grant from the State of Florida to address the issue abatement of pollution sources that are up gradient of Silver Springs. The project area has a high concentration of wells and septic tanks and is located within the primary protection area for Silver Springs, which is being impacted by high nitrates and other wastewater pollutants....Author(s)Marc WalchRishi ImmanniC.B. Flip MellingerTodd PetrieSourceProceedings of the Water Environment FederationSubjectSession 77: GIS: Field Assessments, Data Management, and Case StudiesDocument typeConference PaperPublisherWater Environment FederationPrint publication date Jan, 2010ISSN1938-6478SICI1938-6478(20100101)2010:11L.5451;1-DOI10.2175/193864710798193482Volume / Issue2010 / 11Content sourceWEFTECFirst / last page(s)5451 - 5478Copyright2010Word count155Subject keywordsSilver SpringsNitrateGISCollection SystemSeptic tanks

The representation of module interfaces

Modular design issues are receiving increased attention from companies interested in reducing the costs from carrying large numbers of components while, at the same time, increasing product quality and providing customers with greater product variety. Existing research has focused mainly on optimising product platforms and product offerings, with little attention being given to the interfaces between modules. This research presents an investigation into how module interfaces are best represented in a Computer-Aided Design/Product Data Management (CAD/PDM) environment. The representation decisions are identified and the advantages and limitations for each option are presented. Representation decisions revolve around issues such as the use of higher abstraction models, the use of ports, and referencing interface components in interface definitions. We conclude that higher abstraction models are necessary, ports should be represented explicitly and interface hardware should not be included directly with the interfaces. The research considers a large number of components from representative products offered by a home appliance manufacturer.

Using sensor web protocols for environmental data acquisition and management

Standard interfaces for data and information access facilitate data management and usability by minimizing the effort required to acquire, catalog and integrate data from a variety of sources. The authors have prototyped several data management and analysis applications using Sensor Web Enablement Services, a suite of service protocols being developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium specifically for handling sensor data in near-real time. This paper provides a brief overview of some of the service protocols and describes how they are used in various sensor web projects involving near-real-time management of sensor data.

BitDew: A data management and distribution service with multi-protocol file transfer and metadata abstraction

Desktop Grids use the computing, network and storage resources from idle desktop PCs distributed over multiple-LANs or the Internet to compute a large variety of resource-demanding distributed applications. While these applications need to access, compute, store and circulate large volumes of data, little attention has been paid to data management in such large-scale, dynamic, heterogeneous, volatile and highly distributed Grids. In most cases, data management relies on ad hoc solutions, and providing a general approach is still a challenging issue. A new class of data management service is desirable to deal with such a variety of file transfer protocols than client/server, P2P or the new and emerging Cloud storage service. To address this problem, we propose the BitDew framework, a programmable environment for automatic and transparent data management on computational Desktop Grids. This paper describes the BitDew programming interface, its architecture, and the performance evaluation of its runtime components. BitDew relies on a specific set of metadata to drive key data management operations, namely life cycle, distribution, placement, replication and fault tolerance with a high level of abstraction. The BitDew runtime environment is a flexible distributed service architecture that integrates modular P2P components such as DHTs (Distributed Hash Tables) for a Distributed Data Catalog and collaborative transport protocols for data distribution. We explain how to plug-in new or existing protocols and we give evidence of the versatility of the framework by implementing HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent protocols and access to the Amazon S3 and IBP Wide Area Storage. We describe the mechanisms used to provide asynchronous and reliable multi-protocols transfers. Through several examples, we describe how application programmers and BitDew users can exploit BitDew's features. We report on performance evaluation using micro-benchmarks, various usage scenarios and data-intense bioinformatics application, both in the Grid context and on the Internet. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the high level of abstraction and transparency is obtained with a reasonable overhead, while offering the benefit of scalability, performance and fault tolerance with little programming cost.

Integration of life cycle assessment in the environmental information system

As the sustainability improvement becomes an essential business task of industry, a number of companies are adopting IT-based environmental information systems (EIS). Life cycle assessment (LCA), a tool to improve environmental friendliness of a product, can also be systemized as a part of the EIS. This paper presents a case of an environmental information system which is integrated with online LCA tool to produce sets of hybrid life cycle inventory and examine its usefulness in the field application of the environmental management. Samsung SDI Ltd., the producer of display panels, has launched an EIS called Sustainability Management Initiative System (SMIS). The system comprised modules of functions such as environmental management system (EMS), green procurement (GP), customer relation (e-VOC), eco-design, and LCA. The LCA module adopted the hybrid LCA methodology in the sense that it combines process LCA for the site processes and input–output (IO) LCA for upstream processes to produce cradle-to-gate LCA results. LCA results from the module are compared with results of other LCA studies made by the application of different methodologies. The advantages and application of the LCA system are also discussed in light of the electronics industry. LCA can play a vital role in sustainability management by finding environmental burden of products in their life cycle. It is especially true in the case of the electronics industry, since the electronic products have some critical public concerns in the use and end-of-life phase. SMIS shows a method for hybrid LCA through online data communication with EMS and GP module. The integration of IT-based hybrid LCA in environmental information system was set to begin in January 2006. The advantage of the comparing and regular monitoring of the LCA value is that it improves the system completeness and increases the reliability of LCA. By comparing the hybrid LCA and process LCA in the cradle-to-gate stage, the gap between both methods of the 42-in. standard definition plasma display panel (PDP) ranges from 1% (acidification impact category) to −282% (abiotic resource depletion impact category), with an average gap of 68.63%. The gaps of the impact categories of acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), and global warming (GWP) are relatively low (less than 10%). In the result of the comparative analysis, the strength of correlation of three impact categories (AP, EP, GWP) shows that it is reliable to use the hybrid LCA when assessing the environmental impacts of the PDP module. Hybrid LCA has its own risk on data accuracy. However, the risk is affordable when it comes to the comparative LCA among different models of similar product line of a company. In the results of 2 years of monitoring of 42-in. Standard definition PDP, the hybrid LCA score has been decreased by 30%. The system also efficiently shortens man-days for LCA study per product. This fact can facilitate the eco-design of the products and can give quick response to the customer's inquiry on the product's eco-profile. Even though there is the necessity for improvement of process data currently available, the hybrid LCA provides insight into the assessments of the eco-efficiency of the manufacturing process and the environmental impacts of a product. As the environmental concerns of the industries increase, the need for environmental data management also increases. LCA shall be a core part of the environmental information system by which the environmental performances of products can be controlled. Hybrid type of LCA is effective in controlling the usual eco-profile of the products in a company. For an industry, in particular electronics, which imports a broad band of raw material and parts, hybrid LCA is more practicable than the classic LCA. Continuous efforts are needed to align input data and keep conformity, which reduces data uncertainty of the system.

Integrated Process Planning Based on 3D Product Models

One of the major barriers to the integration of CAD, CAPP and CAM is insufficiency and incompatibility of product model data among various application systems. This paper presented an effective approach to achieve integrated process planning with CAD and CAM under a product data management environment based on 3D product models. The system architecture and the processes of an integrated process planning system (3D-IPP) were constructed using feature information and specific CAD/CAPP/CAM integration technologies based on feature. A feature-based product information model is designed as the information source for the 3D-IPP. A feature-based integrated process planning method was developed based on group technology, intelligent decision-making algorithms and parametric operation templates in numerically controlled (NC) programming. The procedures of intelligent process route planning and parametric NC operation planning were addressed. The 3D-IPP system and its implementation provide an effective solution to strive for complete information sharing among application systems of CAD, CAPP and CAM.

Vision of Cyberinfrastructure for End-to-End Environmental Explorations (C4E4)

Holistic approaches are needed for understanding and addressing a wide range of environmental issues that require multidis- ciplinary studies of complex and interlocking systems. The writers' vision of a cyberinfrastructure for end-to-end environmental explo- ration C4E4 that combines data and modeling tools in an integrated environment across different spatial and temporal scales is presented. The overall goal behind C4E4 is to enable a broad environmental research and remediation community to address the challenges of environmental data management and integration in real-world settings. The St. Joseph Watershed in northern Indiana is chosen as a test bed in this effort. The C4E4 framework will allow researchers to combine heterogeneous data resources with state-of- the-art modeling and visualization tools through a user-friendly web portal. By engaging TeraGrid resources, C4E4 will have the computational resources to store, manipulate, and query large data sets, thereby facilitating new science. C4E4 will serve as a prototype, and provide valuable experience for scaling up to larger observatories at the national level. This paper presents the writers' vision and goals, initial efforts, and briefly describes how C4E4 can benefit the environmental community.

A Data Hub Model for Simulation-Based Ship Design

Within a shipyard, designers have their own design objectives and moreover apply different software on heterogeneous hardware platforms; nevertheless requested collabtive operation still remains in the comple design circumstance. The paper presents a data hub model to sovle this problem and improve effectiveness and efficiency for ship design. The model is simulation-driven and consists of two main parts, including data management and integrated simulation environment. The data management processes the simulation-based design data storage, access and transformation. The integrated simulation environment bridges the gap among the multidisciplinary domain including CAD geometry, CAE, virtual navigation, kinematics and dynamics simulation. In addition, an application is developed to evaluate the validity of data hub model for ship design.

Corrosion science general-purpose data model and interface (III): Data integration and management environment

A brand new Corrosion Data Integration and Management Environment (CDIME) is developed in Java programming language based on general-purpose corrosion data model (GPCDM) and corrosion data markup language (CDML) proposed in the previous works. In general, the functionalities and features of CDIME meet most of design requirements including composition, inheritance, self-contained, relatively independence and so on. An insight tutorial is introduced on the life circle of corrosion data islands from its creation, maintenance, and application like publishing. The template feature makes the building of comprehensive data island as simple as a few mouse clicks. Read-only publishing of data as e-Book and PDF hold their own places. Achieved document can be imported and exported freely on any running CDIME. The achieving feature is addressed in detail because it is critical to data sharing and integration in GPCDM. At the end, a real example is presented to help the understanding of data islands assembling and the advanced features offered by CDIME.

Modeling and querying fuzzy spatiotemporal databases

Modeling spatiotemporal data, in particular fuzzy and complex spatial objects representing geographic entities and relations, is a topic of great importance in geographic information systems, computer vision, environmental data management systems, etc. Because of complex requirements, it is challenging to represent spatiotemporal data and its features in databases and to effectively query them. This article presents a new approach to model and query the spatiotemporal data of fuzzy spatial and complex objects and/or spatial relations. In our case study, we use a meteorological database application in an intelligent database architecture, which combines an object-oriented database with a knowledgebase for modeling and querying spatiotemporal objects.

HydroGeo Analyst: A Data Management Solution to Ground Water and Environmental Projects

Hydrogeologic data often come from a variety of sources and in different formats. A software platform to organize, access, edit, and report all these data is a prerequisite for effective management of ground water and environmental projects. Data management software for such projects needs to be (1) comprehensive—allowing the storage of multiple layers of information such as lithological data, geophysical data, water levels, and water quality data; (2) versatile—allowing data in a variety of formats; and (3) intuitive—having a simple and easy-to-use interface. HydroGeo Analyst, developed by Waterloo Hydrogeologic Inc. (WHI), is intended to be such an environmental data management system. It is designed to handle routine tasks such as data interpretation, statistical analysis, GIS mapping, data charting, and visualization within a single software platform to minimize the time and effort involved in the data communication and migration. HydroGeo Analyst operates as a desktop application based on Microsoft SQL Server technology, which enables Internet-based server-client data communication. More information on HydroGeo Analyst can be found at the vender’s Web site at http://water.slb.com.

A National Human Neuroimaging Collaboratory Enabled by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN)

The aggregation of imaging, clinical, and behavioral data from multiple independent institutions and researchers presents both a great opportunity for biomedical research as well as a formidable challenge. Many research groups have well-established data collection and analysis procedures, as well as data and metadata format requirements that are particular to that group. Moreover, the types of data and metadata collected are quite diverse, including image, physiological, and behavioral data, as well as descriptions of experimental design, and preprocessing and analysis methods. Each of these types of data utilizes a variety of software tools for collection, storage, and processing. Furthermore sites are reluctant to release control over the distribution and access to the data and the tools. To address these needs, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) has developed a federated and distributed infrastructure for the storage, retrieval, analysis, and documentation of biomedical imaging data. The infrastructure consists of distributed data collections hosted on dedicated storage and computational resources located at each participating site, a federated data management system and data integration environment, an Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema for data exchange, and analysis pipelines, designed to leverage both the distributed data management environment and the available grid computing resources.

An environment for complex behaviour detection in bio-potential experiments

We propose BioS (Bio-potential Study) as a new virtual data analysis and management environment. It was devised to cope with the physiological signals, in order to manage different data using advanced methods of analysis and to find a simple way to decode and interpret data. BioS has been structured as a flexible, modular, and portable environment. It includes several modules as data importing and loading, data visualization (1D, 2D, 3D), pre-processing (frequency and saturation filtering, statistical analysis), spatiotemporal processing such as power spectrum, independent component analysis (ICA) in spatial and time domain, and nonlinear analysis for the extraction of the maximum Lyapunov exponent and d-infinity using optimized algorithms. The environment provides a user-friendly Graphic User Interface that allows inexperienced users to perform complex analyses and to speed up experimental data processing.

中小企業における設計プロセスへのLCA導入

Objective. Eco-Design tools, which are widely utilized by major manufactures, have not been spread over Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). SME does not have an incentive to implement Eco-design tools because of the following reasons: (i) Many SMEs are standing at the middle position of the products supply chains. Therefore, they receive the specifications of their products from their customers and they have small flexibility of design and production procedures. (ii) Shortage of information on the upper and the lower stages of the products supply chains make implementing Eco-design tools difficult. (iii) SMEs do not have enough capacity to install new tools due to lack of staff and budget for research and development. To overcome these obstacles, we have implemented the Eco-Design Promotion Project for SME, to diffuse Eco-Design tools, i.e, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Quality Function Deployment for Environment (QFDE). This paper introduces the results of the project, and proposes a model of design process. Results and Discussion. The number of companies participated in the project was 14 in 2006FY and 63 in 2007FY. As examples, two cases practiced in 2006FY are shown in this paper. In case of the ventilation system, the company implemented QFDE and LCA for the fan, and clarified that CO2 emission through the product life cycle is dominated by the usage stage and the designers found that redesign of the shape of blade to reduce the power consumption in the usage stage is effective to improve the environmental performance. In case of the casting products, the company applied LCA to improve its production line because the detailed product design is strictly specified by its customer. The LCA quantified that the dominant factor was the energy consumption in cupola furnace and the pig iron production. The company found that the improvement of process yield and reducing the feed amount of pig iron are effective. To implement LCA and QFDE for SME effectively, we have to consider not only the product characteristics, but also every aspect where the SME can contribute for the product, since most SMEs are standing at the middle position of the products supply chains. Furthermore, we have to take into account the variations of the status and condition of environmental data management depending on the SME. Therefore, we propose a business model for SME to implement Eco-Design. Conclusions. The paper shows that the Eco-design tools can be useful for SME to reduce environmental impact by implementing the right tools in right timing by describing practical case studies. Business process models developed by using IDEF0 function modeling method show when LCA is used and what are needed for implementation of LCA. Two business process models are proposed to implement LCA on product design process and on production line design process.

THE TRANSPORT AND DISPLAY OF ICONS FROM SAINT CATHERINE'S MONASTERY

The temporary exhibition 'Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai' was held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2006–2007. The majority of objects in the exhibition were on loan from St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt. The terms of loan for the objects required maintaining low levels of relative humidity during the transport and display of the objects. The design and construction of both crates and exhibition vitrines are described and illustrated. The method of environmental data management used for the exhibition is discussed.