Abstract - National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Protocols, Data Partnerships, and ArcView Implementation Issues for Serving ArcInfo-Based GIS Coverages over the Internet

Track: Information Access and the Internet

Michael R. Kunzmann
University of Arizona
School of Renewable Natural Resources
125 Biological Sciences East
Tucson, AZ 85721

Telephone: 520-621-7282
Fax: 520-621-3045
E-mail: mrsk@npscpsu.srnr.arizona.edu

Shailaja Venkatsubramanyan, Myles Flynn, Michelle M. Hawks

National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Protocols, Data Partnerships, and ArcView Implementation Issues for Serving ArcInfo-Based GIS Coverages over the Internet

Defining Issue: The development of a USGS Biological Resources Division (BRD) National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) at the Cooperative Resources Studies Unit and the School of Renewable Natural Resources at the University of Arizona (CPSU/ART) is part of a large national USGS-BRD cooperative effort to make ecological data and related natural and cultural resources information readily available to land managing agencies and the public. A goal of the NBII is to establish a framework to create a distributed "federation" of ecological information Internet nodes relying on a network of state partnerships and cooperators. Current CPSU/UA NBII activities include (1) the storage of primary, shared, state-wide georeferenced GIS ArcInfo thematic data sets, such as counties and roads; (2) the creation, modification, and storage of basic ecological data sets required for BRD research activities and programs such as GAP and other federal and state inventory and monitoring program data; (3) the development of Internet software tools and protocols to facilitate data transfer, sharing, and on-line ArcView browsing; and (4) NBII coordination, information extension, and training-related activities necessary to develop and support NBII program goals, in-state cooperators, and information users. Current efforts to distribute ecological data to the public are limited by a lack of coherent long-term support, adequately trained personnel, data standards, and in some cases adequate data distribution mechanisms and information protocols. The exponential growth of information and distributed computing power over the last decade has greatly increased the need to develop an adequate infrastructure and new information paradigms to facilitate data sharing and storage. A significant commitment to the goals of NBII by interested parties could ensure that ecological information would be readily available to enhance the public decision making process in a timely, cost efficient manner. Fortunately, Esri GIS-based products and programming tools have made significant progress to overcome some of the GIS-related institutional challenges in the NBII initiative. The purposes of this paper are (1) to highlight the BRD-CPSU/ART cooperative data servicing efforts using a Netscape/ArcInfo/ArcView WWW application; (2) to discuss the importance of uniform and ecologically-sound classifications and standards in coverage attribution for designing a WWW query system; and (3) to discuss the technical and institutional issues encountered while implementing a BRD-NBII WWW data services program. GIS Solution: To develop an interactive GIS WWW site to share USGS-BRD GIS coverages and databases, to facilitate information sharing and data exchange, and to promote sound ecologically based public decision making processes in ecologically important landscapes.Methodology: The development of a CPSU/ART set of ArcInfo GIS-based digital thematic libraries that can be browsed, as well as updated, over the Internet, using interapplication programming techniques between Netscape, ArcInfo, ArcView, Avenue, and CGI scripts. To increase the efficiency of data transfer and exchange over the WWW, ArcView has been customized to facilitate data browsing and to easily generate spatial subsets from desired ArcInfo coverages based upon user chosen criterion or constraints. For consistency, ArcView is used as a graphical user interface and software agent to gather and pass sufficient coverage information to ArcInfo, Netscape, and CGI scripts prior to dynamically processing the user download request for information over the WWW. This interapplication approach in data servicing potentially saves user time to download data across the WWW. To accomplish the NBII information sharing task efficiently, digital libraries are (1) created with workstation ArcInfo; (2) stored on a distributed PCNFS file servers and subsystems; and (3) accessed by a dedicated Sun SPARC 20 WWW server with a Netscape 2.0 front end. In addition, all coverages must meet existing ecologically sound classification standards as well as FGDC metadata standards to facilitate uniform and dependable ArcView queries. The importance of developing uniform ecological-based classifications and coverage attributes will be illustrated by using preliminary GAP vegetation coverages from California, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Software: Application software used for this project include Netscape 2.0, ArcInfo (and related AMLs), ArcView, Avenue, numerous CGI processing scripts, a PERL compiler, as well as developing numerous coverage attribute classification schemes to enhance WWW query capability and uniformity.