Environmental Data Management with the River Basin Information System (RBIS)

The pressure on environmental systems is increasing worldwide due to population growth and the consequences of climate change. Adaptable tools and methods are needed to elaborate information, develop understanding and strategies for sustainable use and management of environmental systems. Such tools should assist scientists, natural resource managers and decision makers in their work by providing (1) sufficient information about relevant drivers, attributes and factors from measured data, (2) tools and methods for user friendly access and integrated analyses of such data, i.e. environmental information systems (EIS), and (3) tools for estimating additional information not available as measurements, i.e. environmental simulation models. In addition, a seamless and preferably standardized exchange of data between EIS and integrated assessment tools such as simulation models is gaining increasing importance as the amount of available environmental information is growing together with the complexity of current environmental challenges. The research at the Department of Geoinformatics, Hydrology and Modelling at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena is reflecting the needs described above with the development of a number of software tools. They provide services and assistance for specific spatio-temporal related environmental problems emerging from integrated research projects. In general, all developed tools (1) use open source software wherever possible to be cost effective, (2) are provided as open source software to others and (3) are highly flexible and adaptable to ensure usability for a wide range of environmental problems. In this paper we briefly present the River Basin Information System (RBIS) – a web-based information management system with a focus on time series and geospatial data. It provides user friendly interfaces for data input and output, powerful visualization components and an adaptable set of functions for data analysis, data management and data enrichment. Sample applications from various research projects are used to illustrate that RBIS is an appropriate platform to meet the demands for collaborative and integrated data management.