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7 An Information Management System for the CMS

7.1 System requirements

Estimating and monitoring carbon at a national level according to IPCC guidelines requires the assembly, analysis, storage, and provision of large amounts of base and derived data. To optimise that process, an efficient information system must be designed and put in place.  In the development of the CMS, information was initially stored within existing or modified databases to provide a method of integrating and transferring data as required.  The scope and scale of the monitoring system can vary considerably according to end-user needs, and the resulting system development and maintenance requirements will have a major bearing on costs. Clearly a system can begin with a simple framework and become more sophisticated as user need demands.

The five key features of the information system are:

  • establishment of national datasets to monitor changes in carbon storage in indigenous forests and soils

  • compilation of an inventory of existing datasets for changes in carbon storage in indigenous forests, scrub and soils

  • recording of results and methodology from the development of the 1990 baseline of carbon storage

  • management of data generated in the process of completing the development of the monitoring system

  • development of data standards and a meta database of data and procedures (Gibb et al. 1998).

Additional requirements of the overall monitoring system that will have an impact on the information system are transparency, flexibility, and legal defensibility.  These will ensure that the carbon estimates are accepted in the international community and that the requirements of other stakeholders in the monitoring system can be incorporated as required.

7.2 Proposed structure

The use of electronic storage and analysis is taken as a given, even if the system is simple to start with. It is important therefore that a common data platform and system architecture is developed and adhered to. Ideally, any other environmental datasets that may eventually become part of a larger, national, land-based, environmental monitoring system would also have the same platform. Given the links between the data in the CMS and other databases, in particular NVS and NSD, some distribution of the data is likely to occur. This would be more apparent if other environmental monitoring needs are eventually added to the CMS so the ability to extract data through a common query language is seriously recommended for any potentially contributing dataset.

A blueprint has been developed that provides an overview of a proposed information system.  This proposal provides a mechanism for widely distributing data to a variety of end-users and is the most comprehensive, complex, and costly possible option.  It consists of:

  • a custodial information system that records data collected by the monitoring system

  • an analysis system that provides all the calculation and reporting functions of the system.

7.3 Custodial systems

Five individual data systems form the core of the Carbon Monitoring Information System (CMIS. They are:

  • the data used to generate the 1990 baseline, which may be subject to refinement if new improved 1990 data become available

  • inventory data from field data from forest and scrub sites and data to determine biomass

  • information used in deriving soil carbon values by field sampling and modelling

  • information on land cover derived from satellite imagery and land-cover databases

  • meta-data that records information on all the datasets used in the monitoring system.

7.4 Carbon analysis system

The analysis system will:

  • calculate the national reservoir of carbon for forest, scrub, and soil broken down by IPCC categories for the 1990 baseline

  • calculate the national reservoir of carbon for forest, scrub, and soil broken down by IPCC categories for  the monitoring system, by date of inventory

  • provide results in a form acceptable to the IPCC

  • calculate changes in carbon levels by IPCC categories for inventory periods

  • provide for baseline maintenance and improvement

  • provide for ad hoc queries.

The delivery system is yet to be finalised and will depend on end-user requirements, both for the carbon monitoring system and for other management and monitoring options, the organisation involved in providing the monitoring service, an agreement on intellectual property and access issues, the degree of sophistication required, and the acceptable price for the system.

7.5 Custodial systems

1990 baseline system

Collates and manages the 1990 baseline datasets, and allows modifications to those datasets as knowledge increases.

Forest and scrub

Will record the raw inventory data collected in the field for forest and scrub plots.

Soils

Will record data used in creating the soil cells and the data collected from field sampling, e.g., from soil pits and paired sites.

Land cover

Will record information about the land cover of New Zealand.  The data envisaged are the VCM, FSMS6, LCDB and 5-yearly LCDB updates.

Meta-data

Records the meta-data at the series level of all the datasets used or referenced by the system.  It comprises an Internet-based entry-and-query tool available to all users.  

Management module and common query language

Provides an audit trail of the data stored in each custodial system.  The common query language is a proposed standard for querying and extracting data from each database.

7.6 Carbon analysis system

The analysis component of the CMIS relies on the underlying custodial systems to provide both data and analytical functions.  The analysis system will:

  • calculate the national reservoir of carbon in the three target areas of indigenous forests, scrublands, and national soils, broken down by IPCC categories for 1990 from the 1990 baseline datasets, and allow for modification of data and functions, generation of audit trails, sensitivity and spatial analysis

  • calculate the national reservoir of carbon in the three target areas of indigenous forests, scrublands, and soils, broken down by IPCC categories for other years based on data in the monitoring databases.  This could use different methodologies from that required for 1990

  • provide results in a format appropriate for IPCC chapter 5 reporting, though not necessarily using the workbook approach of chapter 5

  • calculate changes in carbon held in the target areas between different inventory periods

  • provide for baseline maintenance. Different baselines could be created at different times using different methods. Rather than recreating baselines, these can be stored with the meta-data describing fully the baselines. (Baseline in this context could be at any year)

  • provide for ad hoc queries and integration of extended analysis functions, e.g., climate models.

The functional specifications, in the form of data flow diagrams, have been developed for the analysis system.

7.7 CD-ROM system

This system provides the following functions:

  • integrates copies of all the datasets

  • provides access to underlying data for use by other data management systems

  • duplicates the Internet-based meta-data custodial system

  • provides the framework for implementing the Carbon analysis system.

An authoritative version of this system will be created as required, from which duplicates for distribution to users will be made.

7.8 Gaps in knowledge

The options for a CMIS range from several entirely separate carbon data systems, each producing a carbon figure and nothing more but which can be added together to provide a carbon figure for the country, to a series of integrated data systems with a range of data, which can be used for many purposes and which is electronically available to a wide range of end-users to analyse, integrate, and interpret.  The more complex the system, the more costly and difficult the technical and intellectual property issues become.

Much of the data that will contribute to the custodial systems comes from pre-existing databases. It remains to be determined which structure of the current systems will support the functions required of an integrated CMIS.

Some of the data needed for this system were originally collected for other purposes for various clients.  The nature of the agreements required to provide the necessary level of access to, and subsequent use of that data, needs to be clarified.  Having clarity as to which organisation or organisations will be responsible for maintaining the monitoring system will help determine the data access issues.  Ownership and intellectual property issues are intimately linked to data access.

There are several issues relating to the distributed nature of the proposed system that need to be considered before that model is confirmed.  The cost of such a system is not trivial and is unlikely to be covered by the funding available over the remainder of the life of the project.  The fact that the custodial systems have different software means that, if they are to be distributed via the same delivery system, they must be linked by a common query language.  How complex that is will also depend on the degree to which "carbon" is linked to MfE's environmental performance indicator system.

Practical, realistic, and specific end-user requirements need to be further refined before progress can be made in costing resource requirements for further development and ongoing maintenance of the CMIS.  The intention is, within the CMIS, to collect data on soils, scrub and indigenous forests that would have enormous value for purposes other than monitoring carbon, including many aspects relating to the management of indigenous forests, carbon accounting, and land management through a consideration of soil quality.  The consideration of the provision of data should ideally be in relation to the various government programmes, which overlap with the carbon programme.  Once the preferred option has been selected, development of the core architecture of the CMIS can continue.  This will consist of:

  • a construction phase in which a beta model is tested (in relation to agreement on end-user needs and output functionality)

  • installation of the beta release with user training and user manuals

  • provision for upgrades and modifications.

 

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