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Data-Driven Web Application for Access and Review of CERP System-Wide Modeling. Kenneth C. Tarboton, Michelle M. Irizarry-Ortiz, Kurt D. Saari and Kevin A. Rodberg South Florida Water Management District, West Palm Beach, FL A key feature in the development of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) was the comparison of the performance of different water management alternatives, facilitated through the use of performance measures accessible on the Restudy Hydrologic Performance Measures Web Page (http://www.sfwmd.gov/org/pld/restudy/hpm). As implementation of CERP proceeds over the next 30 years it will be refined through more detailed design of each project and monitoring of the response of the system to projects as they are implemented. To facilitate system-wide plan evaluation, simulation models will produce thousands of performance measures and indicators, for each of hundreds of simulation runs. The new CERP System-Wide Modeling web application, (http://modeling.cerpzone.org/cerp_recover/index.jsp) presented herein, facilitates the regular posting of model results to the web making them accessible to multiagency, multi-disciplinary teams and the general public. Design Criteria. Design criteria for the web page came from experience with development, maintenance and extensive use of the Restudy web page. Key design criteria included: minimizing the number of clicks to get to a particular graphic, maximizing speed with which graphicsare displayed, minimizing reading (i.e. a more graphical/spatial interface rather than text based), use of default settings, and minimizing the maintenance of uploading multiple model simulations on a regular basis. Furthermore there was a need to provide a common interface and repository for input, output and source code and a means of reviewing performance measures for each of the different models used to support CERP System-Wide Modeling. Functionality. Additional funtionality requirements in the CERP System-Wide Modeling web page included: sorting by model, by project, by spatial feature (e.g. graphics for canals distinct from graphics for gages and cells) or by topic (e.g. separate access to animations, water budgets, water supply graphics, etc.). Accessibility to model input, output and source code for each run was required, as well as both a hierarchical and graphical means of accessing geographic locations from any point in the page. Architecture. The design criteria and required features of the web application dictated certain design decisions. The ability to store and search for information necessitated using a web accessible database comprising a database server, application server and web browser. Oracle was selected as the database server and Java as the 'open-source' application development environment in order to ensure cross-platform compatibility and scalability. The database server stores maps, graphics and tables and their associated spatial component information, model data sets, metadata, and descriptive text. The application server's servlet makes all database queries, delivers database driven dynamic menu information, and delivers spatial/map features for different graphic locations. It also retrieves the text and pdf (Portable Data Format) files from the database, based upon a user’s selection, and presents them directly in the browser or using Adobe Acrobat's browser plug-in, respectively. The web browser makes use of a thin client Java server protocol (jsp) application to allow user interaction with the servlet from dynamic menus and a spatial/map interface that presents information and graphics. Data Loading. Graphics from model simulations are converted to pdf files and loaded to the database using a master control file and program that assigns the spatial relational information, text for display on the web application, and a unique database identifier for each graphic. This facilitates maintenance of the web page because only the master control file needs to be updated whenever new graphics are produced. The information provided in the application is dynamically created based upon content in the database. This means that if for a particular project or simulation certain graphics are not produced, then for that simulation there will not be any broken links (links that point to a missing graphic), as often happens with static web pages, because the link will not be produced in the database. Input, output and source-code are also loaded to the database using a control file and are associated to a particular model simulation. Development. Development of the web application occurred over a period from February 2001 up to the first public release of the page in October 2002. The development included creation of an initial prototype, presented to CERP Restoration Coordination and Verification (RECOVER) teams in July 2001. A Beta release of the application was demonstrated to RECOVER in December 2001. Following comments from RECOVER significant design modifications were made to the application before release to the public in October 2001. Since then, the application has continued to evolve as a result of comments from the potential user audience. Regional hydrologic modeling, undertaken since the development of CERP has been loaded onto the application and production modeling, commencing with the Initial CERP update and subsequent modeling for CERP Project Delivery Teams, will be provided on the web application as it becomes available. Acknowledgements Many individuals contributed significantly to the development of this application including supervision by Marie Pietrucha and Pattie Fulton, development by Mathew Hinton, Cory Adams, Jeyanthi Selvarasu, Michael Warner, Joseph Rodrigues and Maryam Mashayekhi, graphical support by Jeffrey Sullivan and Jenifer Barnes, hardware configuration by Ram Jadvani and review by Brenda Mills, Carl Fitz, Freddie James and Michael Choate. All of these contributions are gratefully acknowledged and without them the application would not have been possible. Contact: Ken Tarboton, South Florida Water Management District, 3301 Gun Club Road, West Palm Beach, FL, 33406, Phone: 561-682-6017, Email: [email protected]