A Hybrid Data Management SystemCaroline Bright
 Monitoring at a forest climate station. Courtesy of Bavarian State Institute of Forestry (LWF) |
The Bavarian State Institute of Forestry (LWF) environmental monitoring project has been running a preventative environmental protection project since 1989, taking continuous meteorological and hydrological measurements from 22 climate stations. The stations produce large amounts of data in different formats that is acquired from hardware and software from different vendors. Historically, this prevented effective data control and quality management.
To address this challenge, LWF employed a hybrid data management system to manage the large amounts of disparate data. The institute integrated the NI DataFinder data management system and DIAdem for use in searching, processing and reporting on the data within their application, regardless of format. Measurement data from the different climate stations now can be combined to find data for model calculations, as well as to detect invalid measurements within the large amount of data collected.
According to Winfried Grimmeisen from the Bavarian Department of Forestry, “The standard software application DIAdem and the DataFinder have achieved an integrated data organization solution that guarantees a high degree of data security and continuous monitoring of the measurement stations.”
Caroline Bright is data management product manager at National Instruments. She may be contacted at editor@ScientificComputing.com.