NSW Water Quality Data Publishing project

DNR NSW is undertaking a project with CANRI funding to serve water quality data online through Web Feature Server standard technology. It will support graphing and downloading of water quality data, but will also be applicable across all natural resource management datasets for a wide range of business functions and many external partners, including indicator reporting for CMAs, SoE and the NLWRA.

Description and objectives

Publish online maps, graphs, tables and data download of salinity, phosphorus, turbidity and other selected priority water quality data through Web Feature Server (WFS) standard technology. As well as being accessible to users through the NSW Natural Resource Atlas, the WFS will be accessible for developers and GIS users to query, access and use data through their own external systems.

By establishing the water quality WFS, we will also implement robust, documented WFS software tools in DNR to publish further natural resources management datasets. The project will make use of substantial technology developed in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Integrated Data Management System (IDMS) project, by integrating it into corporately managed DNR software.

Finally we will create a WFS schema and use it to promote the benefits of a common data model for sharing data between agencies. To this end, we will propose the schema as a candidate national water quality data web service standard.

Results

Deliverable	Description	Main clients	Public?	Result
1. Water quality data web pages	Salinity, phosphorus and turbidity "key site" data, and other water quality project data published with maps, graphs, tables, download and metadata. Available as filterable, queriable and downloadable map layers in the NRAtlas and linked from the WaterInfo website.	Public water data users: CMA staff, river managers, local Council environment officers.		NSW Natural Resource Atlas (test version) Select "Water quality key sites, 1991-2002" under "Inland Waters" topic
2. Water quality Web Feature Service	Documented, standards-based XML web service providing flexible access to DIPNR water quality data for use in external organisations' systems.	NLWRA, AFFA, MDBC, DEC		Water quality Web Feature Service (test version)
3. DIPNR Web Feature Server (WFS) software	Documented, standards-based software installed in DIPNR to serve water quality data; able to be reused for other observation-based data from the EDB.	OKSI IMG
4. DIPNR web graphing and data download capability (WFS client)	DIPNR's existing Webmap Composer software upgraded to support configuration and publishing of maps, graphs, tables and download of data from web feature services, with user and system documentation.	OCRR Water, OCRR Soils, OKSI Res. Econ.
5. Water quality XML schema	Documented, standards-based XML schema specifying the format and content of valid requests to and responses from the water quality data WFS. A starting-point for national standardisation.	NLWRA, AFFA		Preliminary schema (dev version) Revised schema will be available shortly
6. Web feature server (WFS) software upgrade	If open-source web feature server software is used, and modified to meet the project requirements, the modifications will be documented and provided back to the software developers for inclusion in their standard build.	Geoserver Project		Geoserver (complex-features version) Code is available now as a branch of Geoserver and will be integrated into Geoserver trunk at 1.4.x
7. Promotional material and events	To be defined in Marketing Plan. Eg email announcements, PPT presentations, report to national committees, paper for conference or industry journal.	All of the above - see Marketing Plan.		Presentations

Process

The following links relate to the project plans, design, meetings and other activities.

• Project Plan

• Project Deliverables, Schedule & Participants

• Organisational Chart

• Related web links

• Scenarios and Use Cases

• Actions and Issues register

• Meeting Papers

• Schema & Architecture Development

• Work on (and behind) the WFS Server

• Work on the Client

• Sample Data for early work on schema and user interface

• Email discussion list - subscribe post message

-- JonathanDoig - 22 April 2005

• Marketing - presentations, marketing plan

• determinand.xls: DNR determinants table as xls file