ENDA is developing a specialised information system for the German Federal Environment Agency that will merge and replace the existing systems for flowing waters, lakes, groundwater and soil.
The mission-critical task is to unify the processes and data models with the largest possible intersection and at the same time map the individual requirements without significantly increasing the complexity of processes, data model and user interface.
The new expert system (ES) will be open and expandable to new environmental compartments such as the german marine environmental database MUDAB or pesticide discovery data.
By developing a common core with environmental compartment-specific modules, we avoid the disadvantages of a generic application — mainly unspecific terminology, but also cumbersome operation.
After the concept development, the realisation of the ES is on the agenda. The architecture of the new ES will be fully compliant with the specifications of the german architecture guideline for federal IT, which now allows us to use state-of-the-art technologies and platforms.
The system will be designed for the automated transmission of measured values via RESTful APIs (web interfaces) and will continue to support table formats on a transitional basis. QA checks individually designed for each environmental compartment ensure high data quality and low testing efforts.
A data warehouse will provide cyclic updated query results as well as individual environmental reports to the Federal Environment Agency employees. It will feature full text search using a search indexer. A query tool supporting complex filter conditions will allow for fast result retrieval and export to different formats.