Studying how human activities and naturally occurring phenomena have an impact on the environment is critical for effective management. Environmental monitoring and modelling are two fundamental practices to help in understanding, predicting and effectively managing these activities and impacts.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Don Cowan, a member of the Water Institute, has developed a new environmental platform designed to support monitoring and modelling of aspects of surface water. Known as iEnvironment++, the platform integrates many types of data, including those used to characterize water such as chemistry, volume and biota along with data to predict or understand water environments such as geology, weather, geomorphology, habitat conditions and various stressors such as land use and permeability. This software platform contains both recent and historical data, with records going as far back as 1970.
iEnvironment++ is the result of over 30 years of research into data models for storing and accessing environmental data,” said Cowan. “We hope that his approach will be adopted as a model and refined to support ongoing environmental research.” Read the full story.