MANAGING SCIENTIFIC-DATA - THE EMAP APPROACH

Many data sets used by EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment P rogram (EMAP) will be collected and managed by groups other than EPA a s the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources develops the inte r-agency National Environmental Monitoring Initiative. Managing these data requires a change from a database managed solely by EPA to a mode l where there is, in addition to distributed databases, truly distribu ted ownership and responsibility. Common standards, data directories, and data descriptions allow data of interest to be located, understood , and downloaded. The level of EMAP data management practices applied to a data set is based on the degree of EMAP responsibility for the da ta. The EMAP Data Directory is an Oracle database that tracks data set s of interest and contains sufficient information about a data set for a user to determine if the data are of interest. Some of the data set s listed in the Directory are in the possession of EMAP and are access ible on the EMAP WWW site (http://www.epa.gov/emap). Other data sets i n the Directory are managed, documented, and made available by other o rganizations. The Data Catalog contains metadata about data sets in th e possession of EMAP and provides the user with information about meth ods, assumptions, and data quality.