[Mapserver-west] Data management question (all the way at the end of the email!)

[Aaron Racicot]

Doug,

Yes, I remember our conversation and yes I did have a poster in Ottawa.


I am starting to work on a set of projects all with a common theme...
decision support for environmental and economic based management issues.
Specifically we are working within the MLPA process in California with
groups like TNC, Coastal Conservancy, and Environmental Defense to try
and provide web-based tools for fisheries management issues.  We are
also looking at integrating real-time scenario capability to these tools
using simulated annealing algorithms as well as other site selection
processes.  

We have other projects (mainly forestry related) that are also trying to
incorporate large amounts of data, on-demand simulation capability, and
GIS functionality.  All of these projects are starting to roll and I am
definitely excited to have Mapserver and Postgres that the heart of it
all.

The Pacific Coast Joint Venture has a very closely aligned vision with
that of Ecotrust where I work.  We have very active forestry, estuary,
and marine programs dealing with fisheries, timber management,
monitoring, and modeling in all of these areas.  Data management and
accessibility is one of our near term issues that I will be addressing.
I would love to chat more about how you are storing, accessing, and
keeping an inventory of all of your data.  As I move forward on our
development I will definitely keep you in the loop, both looking for
your opinions and help, but also in areas for future collaboration.

One issue we are going to be faced with is that we have applications
that are being developed here in Portland, but will be deployed in
California in the future.  We should also sit down some time and talk
about the capabilities and applicability of HostGIS in these situations.



Another issue for the group at large:
I am coming into an environment here at Ecotrust that has a cobbled
together system of data management consisting of mainly raw directories
of archived data, along with some simple SDE databases.  How are people
managing data layers out there?  I am considering writing a database
interface script based upon a cron job that traverses directories and
gleans the file structure and metadata in an automated way to populate a
database.  This in the end would make our data more useful and much more
accessible.  Many of the Digital Asset Management tools out there (like
www.extensis.com) are pricy and not very reasonable for applications
like ours (don't support Postgres either!) and I don't want to fall into
the trap of SDE and Geo-Databases from ESRI.  Has anyone done something
similar or are there other suggestions?  Specifically how are people
handling storage of Metadata for all of the archives that you are
dealing with?  We have a very large set of varied west coast base layers
that I would love to make more accessible to our 6-8 GIS related people
(as well as accessible on the web for people like all of you!) in a more
convenient way.  

Are any of you going to the MUM3 conference?

Aaron


-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Renwick [mailto:dug at copia.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 1:28 PM
To: Aaron Racicot
Subject: Re: [Mapserver-west] Hello from Portland Oregon...

Hi Aaron,

If I recall, you had a poster session and Matt and I talked with you.

I'd like to hear more about your "web-based decision support tools for
environmental managers."  We're working on a system for the Pacific
Coast
Joint Venture that is an inventory of environmental restoration projects
and
an online restoration collaboration system in which they can continue to
share their restoration work.

See you.
Doug