Dr Matthew StiffCEH Director Environmental Informatics

Presentation to CRM SIGNeSC Edinburgh 12 July 2007

The Environmental Informatics Programme

A “flagship” programme for CEH

The Environmental Informatics Programme

• A new programme for CEH• An integrated approach to knowledge

management encompassing digital, paper and object archives

• Delivery to be achieved through revised management structures with increased emphasis on data management and informatics

• Improved service and delivery

Informatics leadership

Working with the core science programmes to

• Establish/facilitate data management

• Develop strategy

• Coordinate informatics development

• Facilitate data integration

• Meet the needs of external partners and stakeholders

Key objectives of EI01

• Development of an integrated framework for the long-term management of CEH’s environmental data

• Data archaeology and capture of corporate knowledge

• Provision of a secure environment for the curation of CEH’s physical archives, integrated with CEH digital data archives

• Development of a defined commercial policy for exploitation of CEH data holdings

Key objectives

• Development of a geospatial gateway providing comprehensive access to CEH spatial and temporal data

• Evaluation and/or development of domain ontologies for semantic integration of environmental data

• Support for and development of CEH corporate and science project Web sites and implementation of Web standards for these sites

Semantic Integration

Semantic Integration

Data Integration

Domain Ontologies

Contextual Metadata

Resource Discovery Metadata

Integration and Analytical Tools

Geo-spatial Integration

Geospatial integration

Land cover map of Great Britain

CEH digital terrain model 50m × 50m resolution (upper Eden catchment)

1:250 000 scale mapping (Ordnance Survey)

CEH 50 × 50 m resolution hydrologically- corrected digital terrain model overlain with derived river network

National soil series from NSRI (250 × 250 m resolution).CEH land cover map (25m x 25m resolution)

Modelled critical loads for acidity of soils (1km resolution)

Modelled spatial variation in soil organic Carbon

National river flow information from the CEH National Water Archive

English Nature Sites of Special Scientific Interest – SSSI boundaries.

Combining ecological and hydrological data

Bringing together CEH tools with those of partners and commercial suppliers

Adding value with CEH knowledge and expertise

Environmental Informatics developing better access to consistent data sets

EI is bringing together CEH’s numerous data holdings into standard corporate structures

Enabling better integration of these and other third party data sets

And providing better access to consistent data at both national and local level

This will allow researchers to investigate complex environmental issues across a range of consistent data sets

Hydrology

Land cover

Cartography

Stewardship Areas

Environmental Informatics support for corporate information management

EI has created a network of information specialist to support science teams

They are fostering Web-based collaborative working methods to track scientific data through projects and from CEH staff leaving and moving from different sites

They will assure proper data cataloguing and storage in new, long-term corporate facilities

This is raising science information management standards across CEH and securing unique environmental records for future research

Lancaster Long-term Archive

CEH Dorset Decommissioning

Environmental Informatics support for

CEH science projects

EI is supporting national-scale monitoring projects such as the Countryside Survey

Developing rugged digital data capture systems for field survey

And comprehensive Web-based data delivery

This is significantly improving quality and speed of data capture, analysis and delivery

Facilitation role

Existing:• IT Strategy Group

Planned working groups• Modelling• Statistics• Field data capture• GIS• Standards• Semantics and data integration

Key collaborative projects

Managed by EIP through the IT Strategy Group

• Storage Infrastructure Project

• Access Grid

• High-performance cluster at Edinburgh

In collaboration with People and Skills/Knowledge Transfer

• Intranet/Internet redevelopment

Thoughts?