About

About the Air Data Management System (ADMS)

The ADMS is a framework of hardware, software, database, and web infrastructure for facilitating air quality research, analysis, planning, and application building.

The CIRA Air Data Management System (ADMS)¹ is designed to provide a comprehensive, flexible, generalized information technology framework for acquiring, managing, visualizing, and disseminating a wide variety of air quality data to analysts, modelers, planners, and policy-makers via an integrated suite of interoperable web tools that are built upon a common framework of database, software, and web components, and to provide a robust, extensible framework for helping developers build online air quality applications that use the same type of data and require the same type of tools.

The ADMS was developed by The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University in response to the recurring need to provide air quality data, tools, and products in a variety of contexts to audiences with varying degrees of scientific and technical expertise. As successive air quality applications were developed, it became clear that creating a generalized framework for jump-starting new applications that used similar data and offered similar products would help maximize development efficiencies and thus decrease costs over time. By offering a broad and extensible platform of data and tools that leverages previous information technology ("I.T.") investments, the ADMS helps maximize current and future sponsor investment by enabling a much faster and economical spin-up period for new air quality-related projects that require any amount of I.T. infrastructure involving large amounts of earth observation data.

The ADMS manages and delivers national-scale monitoring data from over three dozen ground-based monitoring networks and many thousands of ambient monitoring sites. In particular, the ADMS is the principal source and quality assurance platform for the Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environments (IMPROVE)⁵ data used to evaluate progress for the Regional Haze program⁸, including sample uncertainty estimates, patched and substituted data, and evaluation of the regional haze tracking metrics that are crucial to the development of State and Tribal implemenation plans for reducing regional haze in compliance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS).

Featured Applications

Several applications have leveraged the ADMS to maximize resources, minimize costs, jump-start development, and facilitate maintenance and operation.

The ADMS supports several applications and websites, including the Federal Land Manager Environmental Database (FED)², the Regional Haze Technical Support System (TSS)¹¹, the WRAP Technical Support System (TSS)⁴, the Intermountain West Data Warehouse (IWDW)³, the Western States Air Resources Council (WESTAR)¹⁰, the National Oil & Gas Emissions Committee Information Repository (OGEC)⁶, and the National Emissions Inventory Collaborative (NEIC)⁷, as well as several previously-funded applications such as the Visibility Information Exchange Web System (VIEWS), the EPA National Air Toxics Database, and the Southeastern Modeling, Analysis, and Planning (SEMAP) website. The WRAP TSS serves as the principal technical source for regional haze planning by states in the WESTAR-WRAP^{(10, 9)} region, which contains 118 visibility-protected Class I areas (75%+ of the national total) and almost all of the tribal Class I areas in the U.S.

The Federal Land Manager Environmental Database (FED)

The Federal Land Manager Environmental Database (FED) is an online repository of air quality data and metadata sponsored by the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. FED has been developed to help states, tribes, federal land managers, scientists, and planners evaluate air quality and visibility in federally-protected ecosystems using a variety of air quality datasets.

The Regional Haze Technical Support System (TSS)

The Regional Haze Technical Support System (TSS) is an online portal to an integrated collection of nationwide technical data and analytical results that are designed to assist states and tribes in the development of their State and Tribal Implementation Plans (SIPs and TIPs) for tracking progress in improving visibility in protected ecosystems in accordance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and the EPA’s Regional Haze Rule.

The WRAP Technical Support System (TSS)

The WRAP Technical Support System (TSS) is an online portal to the technical data and analytical results prepared by the members of the Western Regional Air Partnership for supporting States and Tribes in the development of their State and Tribal Implementation Plans (SIPs and TIPs) for tracking progress in improving visibility in protected ecosystems in accordance with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and the EPA’s Regional Haze Rule.

The Intermountain West Data Warehouse (IWDW)

The IWDW provides easy online access to monitored air quality data, gridded modeling products, emissions data, and an integrated suite of tools to help assess air quality in the intermountain West. The IWDW project is supported by multiple federal and state agencies with project management assistance from WESTAR-WRAP and technology development and operation by CSU-CIRA.

Architecture and Design

The components of the ADMS have been designed to be flexible, modular, extensible, and reusable across technology stacks and development environments.

By offering a broad and extensible platform of data and tools that leverages previous information technology ("I.T.") investments, the ADMS helps maximize current and future sponsor investment by enabling a much faster and economical spin-up period for new air quality-related projects that require any amount of I.T. infrastructure involving large amounts of earth observation data.

ADMS Ecosystem Diagram Diagram (*.png)

This diagram illustrates the ecosystem of individual websites and applications that have been built to leverage and extend the CIRA Air Data Management System (ADMS). A new application node has been added to the diagram to represent the proposed WFEIS application/website (see the orange box in the upper left-hand corner of the diagram). Click on the thumbnail to the left to see a larger version of the image and then right-click on the lightbox image and select "Save image as..." to retrieve the highest-resolution version.

ADMS Data Flow Animation (*.gif); Full presentation (*.pptx)

This diagram illustrates the data sources and providers, data types and datasets, subsystems and functional components, and the end user web applications that enable and support the import, transformation, management, and presentation of data within ADMS ecosystem, together with illustrations of the direction, branching, and context of the data flows between core system components. The Air Data Managment System is, at its core, a unified framework for acquiring, importing, transforming, managing, presenting, and disseminating a wide variety of air quality data on the web via a unified and robust system of integrated tools, products, and services. Understanding how data flows through the system is a great way to better understand the ADMS.

ADMS Architecture Overview Diagram Diagram (*.png)

This diagram illustrates the high-level architectural components that comprise the CIRA Air Data Management System (ADMS) and how those components contribute to the data-centric workflow that the ADMS has been designed to facilitate. A new application node has been added to the diagram to represent the proposed WFEIS application/website (see the orange box in the upper left-hand corner of the diagram). Click on the thumbnail to the left to see a larger version of the image and then right-click on the lightbox image and select "Save image as..." to retrieve the highest-resolution version.

ADMS Hardware and Networking Infrastructure Diagram (*.jpg)

This diagram illustrates the physical hardware infrastructure that powers the ADMS and its applications, including the file servers, database servers, web servers, auxiliary servers, and development servers that serve various functional roles within the system, as well as the network connections between them and their relationship within the context of the CSU network and the broader Internet. The hardware infrastructure required to service the ADMS and its applications has grown substantially over the years, and a significant amount of time and effort is required for its ongoing maintenance and operation. Hardware components are salvaged and repurposed from CIRA/CSU surplus for use by the ADMS whenever possible, and functional server roles are consolidated and/or changed as needed.

ADMS Data, Processing, and Administrative Workflows Diagram (*.jpg)

This diagram illustrates the often complex workflows and dataflows within the ADMS ecosystem, together with the sponsors and collaborators who provide guidance, requirements, and funding as well as the primary partners who are responsible for working most closely with CIRA to execute the tasks associated with the maintenance and operation of each individual application that depends upon the ADMS framework. It also provides a high-level illustration of how source air quality data is obtained, validated, transformed, normalized, stored, managed across the functional subsystems of the ADMS to be dissemintated online via various websites and services.

ADMS Data Visualization and Exploration Tools Diagram (*.jpg)

This diagram illustrates the wide variety of visualization, analysis, exploration, and dissemination tools that have been developed for the various end user applications of the ADMS. These integrated tools have been designed 1) to fulfill the needs and requirements of end users with regard to exploring the broad spectrum of monitored, modeled, and emissions data stored in the ADMS databases, 2) for supporting a wide scope of user needs with regard to assessing air quality in protected ecosystems, and 3) to better facilitate the development of the technical portions of state and tribal implementation plans by providing presentation-ready data products.

ADMS Analogous Application Development Systems Full presentation (*.pdf)

This series of simple diagrams illustrates the high-level relational similarities between the ADMS and other development frameworks. In the same way that AutoCAD is a general framework for developing a wide variety of technical diagrams, Google Docs is a general framework for developing a wide variety of documents, and WordPress is a general framework for developing a wide variety of websites, the ADMS is a general framework for developing a wide variety of air quality applications. And in the same way that the products of those development frameworks are dependent upon the frameworks themselves, the air quality applications developed using the ADMS are dependent upon the hardware, software, and database infrastructure of the ADMS.

Decision Support

The ADMS is designed to support air quality decision-making by offering easy access to a wide variety of datasets via an integrated suite of tools.

Most users of ADMS applications are asking questions such as “What pollutants are impacting a given area and where are they coming from?” States are further mandated to answer the question of “What can be done to reduce these impacts?”, because the EPA's Regional Haze Rule requires states and tribes to develop implementation plans for reducing emissions and demonstrating reasonable progress towards doing so, and these plans must provide for an improvement during the 20% worst visibility days while also ensuring no degradation during the 20% best visibility days. To accomplish this, users must identify the pollutants, quantify their amounts, and meaningfully distinguish between anthropogenic and natural emissions sources that contribute to pollution on both the “best” and the “worst” visibility days in a given area. They must then determine reasonable control measures for each controllable (anthropogenic) source and evaluate these measures on the basis of cost, time, energy, environmental impacts, and the remaining life of the source. Planners then employ these analyses to make decisions about what controls to implement, to estimate projected improvements, and to track their progress towards reaching these goals. Besides these specialized planners, the remaing bulk of the ADMS user base is comprised of researchers, analysts, scientists, and students from a wide spectrum of environmental disciplines who use the tools and data resources of the ADMS websites to conduct generalized air quality data analysis. For both groups of users, achieving greater and more granular insight into the temporal and spatial distribution of fire activity and emissions through the expected outcomes of this proposal would greatly enhance the usefulness of the system overall.

ADMS Ecosystem Timeline

The ADMS evolved into a general-purpose framework by incorporating the most robust components from a long succession of successful air quality applications

Framework Major application Pivotal project Application extension Pivotal application

Year	Project	Comments
2000	Original WRAP Database	In 2000, the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) began collaborating with the National Park Service (NPS) to hire a developer and prototype a relational database to manage observational data from the IMPROVE monitoring network and a few other aerosol monitoring networks. To provide wider access to the data, a pilot website was created and basic online tools for querying and downloading the data were developed. The WRAP Database was the first collaborative effort to consolidate air quality data relevant to regional haze planning into a relational database that could be accessed via web tools.
2002	Visibility Information Exchange Website (VIEWS)	In 2002, the NPS collaborated with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the five Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs) to refine and extend the WRAP database into an enterprise-level decision support system for providing ambient air quality data on the web via an integrated suite of web tools. The resulting Visibility Information Exchange Web System (VIEWS) was funded primarily through EPA grants to the RPOs for providing online resources that states and tribes could use for writing the technical portions of their State and Tribal Implementation Plans for complying with the EPA Regional Haze Rule. The resulting VIEWS website garnered a large user base within the air quality and regional haze planning communities over the following years.
2004	National Ambient Air Toxics Archive (ATDA)	Encouraged by the success of VIEWS, the EPA asked CIRA to develop a VIEWS-like database for the management of air toxics data. Because the VIEWS database had been designed from the outset with a general-purpose schema for storing observational data, no significant modifications were needed and the ATDA website was quickly launched to offer easy access to EPA air toxics data.
2005	WRAP Technical Support System v.1 (TSS)	Also encouraged by the success of VIEWS, the Western Regional Air Partnership asked CIRA to develop a decision support system specifically oriented to the WRAP in order to provide western states and tribes with the data and technical tools they needed to compose their implementation plans (SIPs and TIPs) for complying with the EPA Regional Haze Rule. The TSS v.1 was the first of three (at the time of this writing) successive versions of the TSS.
2006	IMPROVE Data Management System (IDMS)	Crocker Nuclear Laboratory at the University of California, Davis asked CIRA to help design a first version of a UCD-based information system to store and manage the data and metadata associated with the operation of the IMPROVE aerosol monitoring network. CIRA subsequently adapted the database design of VIEWS to help create a schema for a planned IMPROVE Data Management System.
2007	NASA ROSES—Satellite Data Enhancements	In 2007, CIRA submitted and won a NASA ROSES proposal to augment the ambient aerosol data in the VIEWS database with data from the Aqua, Terra, and MODIS satellites in order to enhance the performance and utility of the photochemical grid models used to study the origin and propagation of pollutants impacting visibility in Class I Areas throughout the U.S. A primary outcome of this project was the development of new analysis tools and data products for the VIEWS website. (NASA Grant#: NNX08AL28G)
2008	NASA ROSES—NAAPS	The following year, CIRA won a follow-up NASA ROSES award in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to augment the ambient aerosol data in the VIEWS database with data from the Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System (NAAPS) in order to develop an Exceptional Events Decision Support System for use by the EPA and individual states. (NASA Grant#: NNX09AT53G)
2009	U.S. Forest Service Water Data project	In 2009, the U.S. Forest Service asked CIRA to begin adding water sampling data from National Forests and Wilderness Areas to the VIEWS database and to develop an extension to the VIEWS website for providing access to the raw data as well as a collection of visualization and analysis tools for exploring the data. This extension was launched and CIRA began the routine import of updated water data from the Forest Service Natural Resource Manager Air (NRMAir) system on an ongoing basis.
2010	Southeastern Management and Planning (SEMAP)	Around 2010, CIRA collaborated with the Southeastern States Air Resource Managers (SESARM) to develop a new Southeastern Modeling, Analysis and Planning (SEMAP) project to produce technical analyses to aid member states, in the development of state implementation plans (SIPs) for ozone and fine particulate matter in order to demonstrate "reasonable progress" in complying with the Regional Haze Rule, required under the Clean Air Act Amendments. The database, software, and web components of VIEWS were leveraged to jump-start the development of the SEMAP system, and a draft website was launched mid-year.
2010	Cyberinfrastructure for AQ Management (CyAir)	CIRA collaborated with Air Resource Specialists, Inc. (ARS) and Sonoma Technology, Inc. (STI) on an EPA-sponsored effort to analyze air quality data provider capabilities, user needs, and data exchange standards and methods in order to develop a general-purpose information technology architecture for servicing future air quality data dissemination and exchange projects consistent with the EPA's Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) architecture. The architecture of VIEWS was used as a primary archetype for the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) required by GEOSS, and several architectural guideline products resulted from the collaboration, which in part were used to inform subsequent refinements to the VIEWS framework.
2011	Air Data Management System (ADMS)	At this point, the components of VIEWS had been successfully leveraged, adapted, and extended many times such that it was becoming clear it would be beneficial to more rigorously and thoroughly synthesize the growing VIEWS architecture into an even more general-purpose and extensible framework for developing future air quality applications in order to further increase development, refinement, and operational efficiencies over time. So the components and subsystems of VIEWS were rearchitected from the ground up as an enterprise-level information technology framework using aspects of the design paradigms that had resulted from the CyAir effort. As a result, the applications that had leveraged the original VIEWS architecture—as well as VIEWS itself—now became derivative applications (or "skins") of the rearchitected and more fundamental ADMS framework.
2011	Federal Land Manager Environmental Database (FED)	When EPA funding of the individual Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs) ended, the federal land managers (primarily the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service) asked CIRA to rebrand the VIEWS website as the Federal Land Manager Environmental Database (FED), to be funded by the FLMs directly. A new visual theme was created for the FED website, and select components of the VIEWS website were migrated to the new website using the underlying database, software, and website framework of the ADMS.
2011	Federal Leadership Forum (FLF)	In mid-2011, a collaboration of federal land managers solicited proposals for the development of a data warehouse to support air quality modeling in the oil and gas regions of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. CIRA submitted a proposal and gave a presentation to the FLF, and VIEWS was subsequently selected as the foundational system from which to design and build the new data warehouse for the three-state area.
2013	Three-State Data Warehouse (TSDW)	The Three-State Data Warehouse effort kicked off in earnest during early 2013. The ADMS framework was leveraged substantially to develop the database, software, and website foundation for the TSDW, and the TSDW began servicing online requests for modeling platform components by the end of the year. The TSDW was the second major application (after FED) to be built from the ground up using the new ADMS framework.
2017	Intermountain West Data Warehouse (IWDW)	The collaborators for the TSDW project decided to expand the geographical and sponsorship appeal of the TSDW by broadening its intended scope from the 3-state area (CO, UT, WY) to the entire Intermountain West region. As a result, the Three-State Data Warehouse was renamed and rebranded to the Intermountain West Data Warehouse (IWDW), and the lessons learned from the development and operation of the TSDW were factored in to the creation of the new application as well as to making some refinements to the underlying ADMS framework itself.
2018	WRAP Technical Support System v.2 (TSSv2)	To service the needs of states and tribes for the second round of regional haze planning, WESTAR-WRAP collaborated with CIRA to develop a second version of the WRAP Technical Support System (TSS). A new website was created using the ADMS framework, and a large suite of new visualization, analysis, and data dissemination tools were developed for the WRAP Technical Support System v.2. The data and products from the TSSv2 were heavily incorporated into the Round 2 implemenation plans of western states and tribes.
2023	Regional Haze Technical Support System	At present, WESTAR-WRAP is again collaborating with CIRA to develop a third version of the TSS, this time designed to accommodate the regional planning needs of all states and tribes, not just those within the WRAP region. The ADMS is currently being leveraged to develop this new application, and a preliminary website is now available. Tools and products from the TSSv2 are being selected, re-factored, and migrated to the new application, and it's expected that a significant suite of new tools will also be developed to facilitate Round 3 regional haze planning.
2024	EPA Exceptional Events Demonstration App	In early 2024, CIRA began collaborating with WESTAR/WRAP and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) to host an EPA Exceptional Events (EE) Demonstration application to lay the groundwork for automating much of the technical data collection required in Exceptional Events Demonstrations by states to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A suitable server was provisioned, configured, and made available on the web, and work is currently underway to develop the demonstration application.
2025	U.S. Forest Service National Lichen Database	Due to the sunsetting and limitation of various in-house resources, the U.S. Forest Service asked CIRA to investigate the possibility of hosting and/or integrating the U.S. Forest Service National Lichen Database on a server at CSU. The underlying lichen data was acquired and examined, and a draft Lichens and Air Quality Biomonitoring Portal (LichenAir) website was created from the data, metadata, and resources provided by the USFS. Several pages were developed, including an interactive repository of lichen bibliography references.
2025	Smoke Impact Assessment System (SIMAS)	CIRA is now collaborating with the Regional Air Quality Council (RAQC) and Air Sciences, Inc. (AirSci) to host a data and application server for a Smoke IMpact Assessment System (SIMAS) that combines numerous pre-processed metrics and products (e.g. monitoring and satellite data) from publicly available datasets to estimate whether there was wildfire smoke in the Denver Metro / Northern Front Range Non-Attainment Area in conjunction with observed high ozone concentrations. SIMAS is being developed during 2024 and will initially be applied to identify days when wildfire smoke is high, medium, low or not at all likely to be in the DM/NFR NAA on days during 2020-2024. From 2024 on, SIMAS will be applied in near-real time (NRT) basis during the ozone season.