The Integrated Cloud-based Environmental Data Management System at Los Alamos National Laboratory - 13391
In today's world, instant access to information is taken for granted. The national labs are no exception; our data users expect immediate access to their data. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has collected over ten million records, and the data needs to be accessible to scientists as well as the public. The data span a wide range of media, analytes, time periods, formats, and quality and have traditionally existed in scattered databases, making comprehensive work with the data impossible. Recently, LANL has successfully integrated all their environmental data into a single, cloud-based, web-accessible data management system. The system combines data transparency to the public with immediate access required by the technical staff. The use of automatic electronic data validation has been critical to immediate data access while saving millions of dollars and increasing data consistency and quality. The system includes a Google Maps based GIS tool that is simple enough for people to locate potentially contaminated sites near their home or workplace, and complex enough to allow scientists to plot and trend their data at the surface and at depth as well as over time. A variety of formatted reports can be run at any desired frequency to report the most current data available in the data base. The advanced user can also run free form queries of the data base. This data management system has saved LANL time and money, an increasingly important accomplishment during periods of budget cuts with increasing demand for immediate electronic services. (authors)