Current and Future State of the IMPROVE Website

Website Purpose (Circa year 2000) The primary purpose of the IMPROVE website is to: provide federal, state, and local air quality regulatory agencies as well as the general public access to: IMPROVE Data and Data Products Aerosol, optical, image data Processed data graphics, aggregated data values, Reports IMPROVE Network Metadata Network information, Site information, etc. Secondary objectives of the website are: Education - visibility issues, science and regulations Provide user supported forum Feedback mechanism for users to report QA/QC issues

Getting old and showing its age Frustrated Users: e.g. Dave Maxwell: “Earlier this year I tried to access basic data from some IMPROVE sites in Idaho. Oregon, and Nevada. It was a time-consuming effort….” “..in trying to access basic graphs or numbers on standard visual range (SVR) for several IMPROVE sites in Idaho and one each in Oregon and Nevada to present in a public document, was that the web site was not user-friendly…” Outdated Tools that may not work

Rethinking the IMPROVE Website The original objectives hold (mostly) Provide federal, state, and local air quality regulatory agencies as well as the general public access to data, metadata and analysis results Organize the wealth of IMPROVE data and information Facilitate data dissemination and proper use Support IMPROVE monitoring program Document steering committee activities, process and exchange information between IMPROVE steering committee members, laboratories and public Inform and educate public on visibility/aerosol issues, science and regulations (maybe) The original objective holds: Provide federal, state, and local air quality regulatory agencies as well as the general public access to IMPROVE data, metadata and data products steering committee transparency Maintain the community

Guiding Principles in the IMPROVE Program Transparency: An open process where information is freely shared including successes and failures. Traceability: Complete documentation on process, procedures and results. Accessibility: Resources including data, metadata and internal documents are made freely and easily available. Community: Facilitate collaborative projects and interaction with others

Moving Forward Propose that we form an adhoc committee to Define IMPROVE website purpose and content Guide the implementation of a new site Personnel / Funding Rodger Ames is working half time at CIRA on the “Three State Data Warehouse” project and would have time this winter Fund by forming a consortium of Land Managers, EPA, States

http://views.cira.colostate.edu/fed/

FED’s Objective Web-based integrated environmental database and data aggregation delivery and visualization tools to support and facilitate environmental data assessments and reports by the National Park Service, Forest Service and others Facilitate the analysis of environmental datasets for NPS and FS resource managers, scientist and general public Increase the use of the environmental datasets Reduce costs, increase efficiency and minimize conflicting data analyses often associated with individual and hand crafted analyses Liberate data analysts from redundant, tedious, and laborious activates National air quality and environmental data integration, analysis and delivery system supporting the aggregation, interpretation and dissemination of air quality and other environmental datasets relevant to Federal Land Managers (NPS and FS)

FED’s Objective Underlying database and infrastructure is designed to support multiple organizations and projects including NPS and FS air quality programs and IMPROVE data distribution. Currently, the system directly supports: NPS website: air quality summary data products Forest Service water chemistry data/metadata delivery NPS-FS RHR data summary needs IMPROVE data/metadata delivery National air quality and environmental data integration, analysis and delivery system supporting the aggregation, interpretation and dissemination of air quality and other environmental datasets relevant to Federal Land Managers (NPS and FS)

Notes follow

FED/IMPROVE In any redevelopment of the IMPROVE website the FED tools can be leverages to better deliver Data and metadata Air quality data summary products (along the lines of Dave’s requests) Data exploration tools, a’ la the old VIEWS tools

Current draft of WRAP 2014-18 Work Plan Through a WESTAR contract, the TSS decision support system is operated and used daily by WRAP members. The Technical Support System (TSS) is used for regional haze planning and progress tracking, and integrates a number of different data support resources under one web-based decision support umbrella for regional haze planning and implementation. This system can be extended to other pollutant and air management issues. The TSS and its operational needs are discussed in more detail in Appendix B. WRAP Regional Haze Data Analysis and Decision Support System (TSS).

Current draft of TSS “update task” work statement draft from WRAP 2014-18 Work Plan The currently active WRAP Regional Haze Planning Data system is the Technical Support System (TSS), already used extensively by WRAP region states for their baseline regional haze plans. The WRAP Technical Steering Committee would oversee the TSS update effort and ongoing operations. The update effort would be sequenced and aligned with any changes to Regional Haze Rule planning requirements. The TSS update effort would consider and incorporate functionality connections and linkages to the: Regional Haze planning support effort discussed in Section III.A and Appendices B and C of the WRAP Work Plan. Western Regional Modeling Framework discussed in Section III.B and Appendix D of the WRAP Work Plan, as the Framework is developed and implemented. NPS and other FLM-sponsored web data systems like FED for Class I and II areas Other regional and national web data systems as appropriate