PNNL

Abstract

Environmental management activities at the Hanford Site produce extensive data about site conditions, contaminants, and cleanup activities. Managing, archiving, and accessing that data requires a high degree of collaboration among site contractors and a high level of awareness by project managers and staff. The Hanford Site has a range of databases (e.g., Hanford Environmental Information System [HEIS]) and their associated user interfaces (e.g., Environmental Dashboard Application [EDA], Virtual Library [VL]), as well as other document management systems (e.g., Integrated Document Management System [IDMS]). However, Hanford lacks a single unified resource to find data (which itself comes in multiple formats) amongst the multiple disparate systems, not to mention ad hoc data not contained in an official repository/database. To facilitate data accessibility, a Hanford Environmental Information and Data Index (HEIDI) is being developed to organize environmental data that spans multiple decades of activity through present day. HEIDI is intended to maximize data value by making information findable and available for reuse. The objective is to catalog the disparate data sets collected so that the evolving needs of planning, executing, and documenting cleanup are addressed, including links to active data sources, when available. With proper implementation of a data catalog, the process of finding environmental datasets related to a topic/theme or geospatial area becomes a routine, reliable process without requiring the searcher to have special knowledge about what data sets exist or where data may be stored. In this project, a collaborative working group, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Hanford Site contractors, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory staff, identified needs and requirements for handling complex environmental data. To demonstrate how identified data catalog requirements would actually work, the configuration of a default catalog instance of the Esri (Redlands, California) Geoportal Server open-source software was modified through settings/options and, where necessary, by modifying software code to produce a prototype HEIDI catalog. A local instance (installation) of the prototype catalog was built and populated with open-source Hanford datasets to allow testing of the interface, the functionality of the metadata standard, role-based access restrictions, and other Hanford-specific requirements. Specifications for the preliminary installation and deployment of a prototype catalog have been documented, and follow-on tasks are planned to position the DOE Richland Operations Office for full HEIDI deployment.