Data Integration in the Field of Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

In order to improve the quality of the environment national and international legislation increasingly asks for monitoring systems as an appropriate basis for decision making at all levels. The fundamental basis for all decisions is an integrated access to data from various programmes, databases, provinces, states etc. In this article we analyze the needs and requirements of data integration based on the examples of the water framework directive and integrated monitoring. Depending on the power of the local systems already in place we suggest two different ways of fulfilling these requirements: 1.) Providing a system that has a common user interface and various data connectors to access existing data in a uniform way. 2.) To establish a super database for (nearly) any kind of environmental data. A combination of both approaches would provide a tool kit which significantly decreases the effort for integration of existing and new data including uniform, polysemantic views and enabling substantial analysis and reporting.