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Full report

• SSR124 - Data management systems for environmental research in northern Australia: Proceedings of a workshop held in Jabiru, Northern Territory, 22 July 1995 (PDF - 3,468 KB)

Separate sections

• Preliminary pages (PDF - 335 KB)
• Chapters 1-4 (PDF - 1,362 KB)
• Chapters 5-8 (PDF - 1,768 KB)

About the report

The Environmental Research Institute of the Supervising Scientist (eriss) is reviewing its information management systems to take advantage of opportunities provided by advances in technology and restructuring of the research program (see SSARR 1995, Johnston in press). As a component of the restructuring of the Institute during 1994, a wetland protection and management research program was established to complement the existing environmental impact of mining research program. Along with this move it was recognised that research projects conducted under the auspices of the wetland program would benefit both by access to past research information and by the utilisation of new information management systems. Thus, it was anticipated that judicious use of 'new' technology would enhance the utility and hence value of much of the data collected over the previous 10-15 years.

In developing a strategy to maximise benefits from the 'new' and the 'old' the needs of the Darwin based operations of the allied Office of the Supervising Scientist (oss) (see SSARR 1995) were also considered. As the oss makes use of the information management services at eriss it was included in the planned review of these services, although it was noted that its needs did not totally correspond to those of eriss (Devonport 1996).

As part of the information system review process a workshop was held in Jabiru on 22 July 1995 to

• comment specifically on a proposal to develop a metadatabase for eriss
• identify the usefulness of other data information systems for wetland research purposes at eriss.

The first objective represents an institute-wide development (Devonport 1996) and it is envisaged that it will eventually involve all current information services and procedures at eriss (eg registrar, library, computing, editorial and publishing, and research). The second objective represents a further step in developing the wetland protection and management research program. The development of further data management systems was one of a number of recommendations that came from a wetland research workshop held in Jabiru 17-20 March 1995 (see Finlayson 1995 for the workshop proceedings).

This paper presents a summary of the discussions held during the July 1995 information systems (specifically for data management) workshop held in Jabiru. A list of workshop participants is given in Appendix 1 and a copy of the program in Appendix 2. Papers submitted by participants were used as resource documents and are contained within this report. They describe the key features of metadatabases, relational databases, decision support systems, Geographic Information Systems and the Environment Resource Information Network (ERIN). Accompanying the papers is a report on information systems needs at eriss/oss that initially stimulated and then strengthened our resolve to investigate the development of a metadatabase (see Appendix 3).