NOAA Creates Deepwater Horizon Searchable Database
The tool is called DIVER for Data Integration, Visualization, Exploration, and Reporting.
A new online tool developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to manage and integrate the data collected by many sources during the five years following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is now available for use by researchers and the public, NOAA announced May 4. The tool is called DIVER for Data Integration, Visualization, Exploration, and Reporting and is available at https://dwhdiver.orr.noaa.gov.
"NOAA pledged from the start of the Deepwater event to be as transparent as possible with the data collected," said Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA's administrator. "The DIVER data warehouse approach builds upon that original pledge and is another significant step in making NOAA's environmental data available for the research community, resource managers, and the general public."
DIVER's data collections include more than 53,000 samples that have resulted in 3.8 million analytical determinations. Previously, validated data were being posted on www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov as soon as they were available but in discrete files rather than inegrated through a tool such as DIVER. According to NOAA, the DIVER data warehouse was built using industry standards for open source big-data approaches to integrating and synthesizing various types of data, such as chemistry results, photos, instrument collections, and dolphin and oyster information from multiple data sources.