assisting data visualization and discovery ber a · assisting data visualization and discovery...

Assisting Data Visualization and DiscoveryJames Badger, Kan Luo, Sara Saeedi, Steve Liangjpbadger@ucalgary.ca

BERA

ObjectivesThe goal of this project is to improve the accessibility of data collected by the BERA projects. This means researchers should be able to quickly find and preview data sets without any proprietary software, then download the data for analysis.

As we want to reach many users on many different types of devices, we chose to use the web as our platform. This avoids having to build OS-specific software and also allows us to rapidly deploy changes and updates to the software without our users having to do anything.

Our data interchange backend is the SensorThings API, a freely available open standard supported by the Open Geospatial Consortium. SensorThings API is a specification for servers and applications dealing with sensor data and communication over HTTP or MQTT. As our visualization dashboard is web-based, the dashboard can use AJAX to make requests for data directly from the web browser without a proxy server.

The dashboard is coded in JavaScript and viewed in a web browser. It is open source in an effort to encourage adoption and feedback from other users of SensorThings API that need a dashboard.

The dashboard is available online at http://dashboard.bera-project.org. The code is freely available via GitHub at https://github.com/GeoSensorWebLab/sensorthings-dashboard, and there have been eight public releases to this date.

Methodology

Results

EnvironmentalConditions

TemperatureRelative Humidity

Air Pressure

Multi-Sensor Device

SensorThings API

Cloud or Self-Hosted Servers

MQTT or HTTP

GPRS, LTE, WiFi, LoRa

Dashboard Server

HTTP

Mobile Devices Desktop Applications

HTTP

Field Data Directly to Your Device

This research is supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Collaborative Research and Development Grant (CRDPJ 469943-14) in conjunction with Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, Cenovus Energy, and ConocoPhillips Canada.

Acknowledgements

View Field Locations in a Browser

View Data Series in a Browser