# Presentation: 313069

## GIS System Design for the Coastal Storms Initiative

- Nazila Merati  OAR/PMEL & OAR Representative to NOAA Enterprise GIS
- Chris Moore – OAR/PMEL
- Tiffany C. Vance – NMFS/AFSC

## GIS brings together data layers and analysis

- GIS is used by scientists, emergency managers and planners
- to create data products
- make maps
- disseminate information in a *timely* manner
- Data that are *georeferenced* can be put into a GIS
- Municipalities are increasingly using GIS to store, disseminate and document land use changes, plan for emergencies and display their data

## GIS efforts in NOAA

- GIS is being used within all NOAA LOs
- NOAA Enterprise GIS Working Group
- Established this year
- All NOAA LOs are represented
- PMEL and some other OAR Labs are providing data in a GIS format and distributing GIS products to users

## GIS gaining acceptance by science community

- Science interest
- AMS IIPS GIS Session in Feb 2003
- Significant NCAR atmospheric modeling GIS effort
- ESRI sponsored Marine Data Model for GIS science
- Benefits of GIS for science
- GIS increasingly useful for scientific computing
- GIS products – paper and electronic maps, maps, sophisticated analysis products and applications
- 3D Visualization
- Increasing sophistication in GIS technology allow users to start visualizing and distributing their data in 3D
- Support for scientific file formats
***netCDF to coverages, shapefiles*** for in-situ and gridded fields

## Getting started with GIS -approaching the CSI project 

- Who are your users?
- How will they access the data? Desktop? Web? Field applications?
- Are the data static? Real time?
- Will the users be adding their own data?
- Do you want a to provide a enhanced presentation of your data?
*Any* solution requires this information

## OAR Case Studies

- PMEL
- Tsunami Inundation Mapping Effort (TIME) program (OAR/PMEL)
- Cordell Bank (NOS/National Marine Sancturaries)
- ShipTracker (OAR/NMAO)
- Other OAR applications
- NSSL, GLERL, OE, ARL

## TIME – GIS supporting Tsunami Hazard System

- Tsunami Inundation Mapping Effort (TIME) program
- Creating products for use by emergency managers in five states from model output
- Involves ingesting data from municipalities, NOAA, model output, observational data
- Data products are maps, both static and live

## TIME Demo

- ArcView Projects with data products are distributed to Emergency Managers

## Live Maps for Hazards

- ESRI Live MapServer allows users to click on and off layers to look at census data, inundation and hazards information
- Interlayer calculations as an added feature

## TIME Capabilities

- TIME is able to both ingest data from different institutions and to provide data products back to the states in a format that is commonly used by emergency planners and city officials
- Data are easily converted to a GIS format
- Very detailed metadata should make the end user confident about the quality of the data they are about to use

## TIME Limitations

- Data can be hard to reformat, often metadata are missing or not available
- Hard to convince scientists that users need the data in format that is easily imported into an ArcGIS project
- Requires learning how to use new software to create GIS projects

## Cordell Bank – Creating a GIS-based Visualization Project

- NOS NMS program is reassessing the management of the Cordell Bank Sanctuary
- PMEL was approached to create visualizations for use by sanctuary managers

## Cordell Bank Data Layers

- GIS layers from NMS – bathymetry, topography, satellite imagery
- CTD data from NMFS
- Hydroacoustic data from NMFS
- Data mapped in ArcGIS, distributed and visualized using VRML

## Cordell Visualization

- GIS products visualized in 3D  e.g. isosurfaces, fencelines

## Cordell Application

- Application allows users to turn off and on layers, move through data
- More complicated time steps are being implemented

## Cordell Capabilities

- Portable visualizations allow users to inspect their data in more than 2 dimensions
- Biological model data combined with physical data layers reveals processes interactions
- Data easily disseminated as visualizations and imported into desktop GIS system
- Visualizations can be viewed using free software such as CosmoPlayer

## Cordell Limitations

- Additional data collection can be costly, but since its already being collected,you may as well display it
- Metadata may not be complete
- Not everyone wants to look at the world in a 3 and 4 D display

## ShipTracker- Real time tracking using GIS

- Provides real time access to ship locations, now being used with marine mammals and drifting objects
- JAVA/JSP front end to a GIS back end

## ShipTracker Capabilities

- Real time tracking of moving objects
- New Technology allows for quicker map updating
- Allows projects to display information that they want to

## Visualization Capabilities at PMEL

- PMEL has extensive visualization capabilities ranging from the I-Desk to the desktop
- Ability to ingest GIS formats and standard scientific formats (EPIC, Ferret netCDF files)
- Portable projects allow scientists to view data and add their own data to the visualization

## PMEL Visualization

- Emergency managers use visualizations for public outreach and teaching tools
- Easily distributed as animations, VRML, quicktime movies, added to GIS projects

## How would we approach CSI

- GIS is an essential component for CSI
- Process
- Identify CSI ingest and output needs
- Build data conversion routines if they don’t already exist
- Determine if the data are better suited for a GIS RDBMS or a simpler database
- Create data delivery mechanism that allows users to get data for use on their own desktop or via the web
- Create the appropriate metadata to make data more understandable to end users
- Determine how data will mesh with the pre-existing municipal and NOAA layers
- Build a GIS that will allow for expansion as it grows, using current scalable technologies