An Internet-Based Data Acquisition and Management Server

An Internet-based Data Acquisition and Management Server has been developed under a three year National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP). The server application system is designed to acquire environmental data from Internet sites and subsequently process, archive and distribute the data to support independent client components developed under the project. System processes are configured through an integrated management system with acquisition and export processes monitored through an integrated status display. The system's asynchronous architecture supports multiple simultaneous Internet connections to permit timely acquisition, processing and distribution of data. To meet NOPP project objectives, the system has been configured to acquire environmental data available for Narragansett Bay from various Internet-based sources (e.g., NOAA PORTS, NOS and NWS nowcast/forecast models, Landsat 7 satellite images from Brown University) for analysis and modeling applications and for dissemination to the public. The multi-institution project includes researchers from Drexel University, Civil and Architectural Engineering; the University of Rhode Island, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Ocean Service (NOS), Brown University and Applied Science Associates. This paper provides a brief overview of the project and describes the functionality provided by the data server.