A representative from one of the leading GIS companies is available for on-site consultation at NOAA and has proposed developing a pilot demonstration project. A large variety of measurement systems are deployed to gather data about the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the environment. But the one characteristic that is common to all forms of environmental data is that they are referenced to a geographical point or region. Each network of sensors would have associated with it a set of criteria related to performance characteristics, including some quality measures. Each sensor might have a set of metadata unique to itself.
Geographic position is one of the pieces of metadata.
An individual interested in the geographic distribution of such sensors could consult a tabular summary of latitudes and longitudes. But a base map showing the locations of the sensors would convey a wealth of information in an instant. For this we need to turn to a computerized map display system. The level of complexity required depends on the many uses of the information about the observing systems. Further processing would be necessitated before beginning to ask such questions.