REINAS: A Real-time System for Managing Environmental Data

Abstract

Managing scientific data is a challenging task, and many of the problems it presents have yet to be adequately solved. The Real-time Environmental Information Network and Analysis System (REINAS) is an attempt to develop an operational solution to the problem of collecting and distributing environmental data in a real-time context, as well as supporting data acquisition, verification, retrieval, visualization and long-term data maintenance. The system is built around one or more databases and has been developed to support both real-time and retrospective regional scale environmental science. Continuous real-time data is acquired from dispersed sensors and input to a logically integrated but physically distributed system. In such a system, the database can provide a powerful structure to handle data management, but current database technology has difficulty meeting the performance requirements that a large real-time environmental system demands. This discussion will describe the REINAS architecture in some detail, including challenges that were addressed in the construction of an operational system, with real users requiring real-time and retrospective access to a variety of structured environmental data, while supporting continuous real-time collection of data into the database.