| Abstract |
An open, standardized data management and related service infrastructure is a crucial
requirement for a seamless storage and exchange of data and information within research projects, for
the dissemination of project results and for their application in decision making processes. However,
typical project databases often refer to only one research project and are limited to specific purposes.
Once implemented, those systems are often not further maintained and updated, rendering the
stored information useless once the system stops operating. The River Basin Information System
(RBIS) presented here is designed to fit not only the requirements of one research project, but focuses
on generic functions, extensibility and standards compliance typically found in interdisciplinary
environmental research. Developed throughout more than 10 years of research cooperation
worldwide, RBIS is designed to manage different types of environmental data with and without
spatial context together with a rich set of metadata. Beside data management and storage, RBIS
provides functions for the visualization, linking, analysis and processing of different types of data
to support research, decision making, result dissemination and information discovery for all kinds
of users. The focus of this paper is on the description of the technical implementation and the
presentation of functions. This will be complemented by an overview of example applications and
experiences during RBIS development and operation. |
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