Strukturen und Funktionen zur Abbildung interdisziplinärer Langzeitprojekte im Bereich von Ökosystem-Monitoring und –Forschung: Der Weg zum Hauptmenü von MORIS / Das objektrelationale Softwarepaket MORIS

Abstract

Originally, MORIS (Monitoring and Research Information System) was designed to store and provide all data gathered by the ecosystem-monitoring activities of the UNECE Integrated Monitoring Programme in Austria. Society, facing challenges like climate change or loss of biodiversity is in urgent need of reliable information on environmental trends and cause effect relationships. To fulfill this requirement ecosystem monitoring and research strongly depend on information systems capable of depicting the results of a wide range of disciplines in the long term. Such systems have to provide not only raw data but also information on the methodological and spatial designs and their changes (primary meta-information). Only a generic and comprehensive architecture (object-relational approach) will allow to avoid redundancies across disciplines while, at the same time, guaranteeing the capacity for continuous adoptions. Highly valuable information is usually hold by the persons involved in the process of data gathering and primary data assessment (personal memory, field protocols). To maintain access to this secondary meta-information an appropriate information system must provide tools for referencing actors, projects and archives anywhere in the system.