GIS & Database Applications Projects

Data Management System

A complete business analysis was conducted in order to compile recommendations for a DMS development approach including an evaluation of current DMS capabilities; development of in-house data, report, model, software, and hardware inventory; and the development of new DMS requirements and success criteria.  INTERA worked to dovetail technology and workflow processes with staff and project budgetary constraints to arrive at a prototype DMS solution.  The prototype system provided a robust and auditable data repository with a web-based interface for entering, validating and reporting data from a prototype data warehouse of chemistry data in support of groundwater modeling efforts.  The backend database was developed in SQL Server with an HTML user interface (UI) and an intermediate C sharp application between the backend and UI.  All files in the system are tracked and changes documented and attached to a metadata descriptor, providing cradle to grave and grave to cradle traceability.

Custom GIS Application

A technical team led by INTERA developed a GIS tool, the IHM (Integrated Hydrologic Model) tool, for the generation of surface water model component parameters within ESRI ArcGIS 8.x. The application fully automates the process of surface water model parameter data generation through the user-friendly drop-down menus and input forms. The IHM tool applies geoprocessing methods, specifically intersection and aggregation, to the input layers and performs on-the-fly relates to access hydrologic parameters associated with land use and soil identifiers in dBase files. The overall goal of this application is to produce dBase files for area-weighted average surface water model input parameters per land use per basin, such as slope, infiltration, Manning's n, interception, storage, precipitation, and potential ET. An additional function provided by this application is the automated generation of a polygon or point shapefile representing a surface water model grid. 

Field Collection Database

INTERA developed an MS Access 2000 database for the Rio Grande Basin Watershed Study Phase 1:  San Acacia Surface Water/Groundwater Investigation.  This database houses a variety of groundwater and surface water data including water elevations, field-collected water quality data, and laboratory water quality data.  Database tables are stored in a back-end database and linked to a front-end database which houses data entry and QA/QC forms and serves as the data entry portal to the back-end data warehouse.  Application workflow is managed through a series of graphical user interfaces (GUIs).  This database contains a variety of customized forms, or GUIs, that allow for data entry, QA/QC, importing data from data loggers, and data export for analysis. 

Database Development

The Contaminant Boundary Database (CBDb) is currently under development by INTERA for the purposes of data storage and rapid query analysis in support of modeling efforts aimed at establishing contaminant boundaries aggregated over a period of time with the inclusion of confidence intervals for these boundaries.  CBDb is a SQL Server 2005 implementation and provides users with the following functionality:  upload of model output files via a web interface, data QA/QC upon import, conversion of numeric data to standard units, data aggregation, and output of files for plotting data in 2D and 3D.