Description of Work

The project is based on 6 core technical Work Packages together with an overall Project Management activity and a final Performance Assessment Work Package. The technical development will closely follow existing European and international standards for data formats, and is likely to make extensive use of SOAP, XML and JAVA  in the development of Internet-ready applications, and Visual C++ in end application development. The core technical Work Packages are detailed below:

 

REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS: Assessment of end user and data providers needs and HCI design criteria including a user workshop resulting in specifications of requirements. It is hoped to encourage a large number of interested parties to participate in this process as well as the assessment of the project deliverables.

 

DATA MANAGEMENT: Design and development of a data warehouse and supporting metadata catalog supported by high speed search, data abstraction and packaging utilities suited to large 4-dimensional temporal-spatial environmental datasets.

 

DATA BROKER INTERFACING & COMMS: Design and development of suitable protocols for communications and messaging together with a broker interface applet incorporating all protocols and packaged for integration with existing user systems or as a construction module for new user applications.

 

E-COMMERCE INTEGRATION: Development of an E-commerce engine customised for environmental data brokerage and provided with all the basic operational capability of an off-the-shelf E-commerce tool.

 

DATA BROKER PROTOTYPING: Integration of Data Broker components and development of a GUI. Commissioning and testing of broker on a test web site using realistic sample datasets.

 

DATA BROKER APPLICATIONS PROTOTYPING: Development of two Data Broker-integrated applications; one modifying an existing marine emergency response information system to interface with the Data Broker, and the other a simple web-based application for primary data viewing.

 

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT & EXPLOITATION EVALUATION: Implementation of the application prototypes at the user sites, structured assessment of the applications and a workshop-based exploitation evaluation.