MED POL Phase III DatabaseMED POL Phase III Database V. Myroshnychenko(1), S.C. Polat Beken(2)

 (1) Institute of Marine Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Erdemli-Icel, Turkey. E-mail: admin@ims.metu.edu.tr (2) UNEP, Coordinating Unit for MAP, Vas. Konstantinou 48, 11635 Athens, Greece. E-mail: scpb@unepmap.gr

General Information

MED POL Phase III is the pollution reduction and control programme for the Mediterranean Action Plan. Monitoring activities is an essential module of MED POL Phase III to track the efficiency of policy measures taken to reduce and control of pollution and as well to assess the status of the marine environment.

Development of the MED POL Phase III Database has been initiated by MED POL in order to increase its data storage and management capabilities according to the needs of MED POL Phase III and to achieve Internet access to the Database. As a first step, the needs and requirements were identified and the conceptual model was developed (2001). The model was thoroughly discussed and approved during expert consultation meeting (Athens, 2002). Development of the first version of the MEDPOL Database has been carried out during 2002-2003. All available data were loaded and the Internet version of the Database has been published at http://195.97.36.231/medpol/ that is linked to UNEP/MAP web site. Works on database upgrade continued in 2003-2004 concentrating on quality control issues, fixing errors found during exploitation and routine loading of monitoring data.

Database was developed using Microsoft Access DBMS, which provides end-to-end solution for all development tasks starting from creation of tables, reports, forms and queries and finishing with publishing database information in Internet.

•Matrix Identification•Station Types•Pollution Parameters•Analysis Methods•Species•Tissues•Countries•Institutes•CRM Codes•Quality Codes, etc

Dictionaries serve for data structuring and standardization of data exchange with providers of pollution data and with environmental agencies. Every parameter value in the Database is supplied with Quality Code. The scheme for flagging data quality contains 2 subsets of quality codes. First subset corresponds to international standards on data exchange and is used by experts. Second subset is similar to first one and is used internally for assigning quality codes during loading and preliminary analysis.

Parameter Code Group CodeDescriptionAir UnitBiota Unit…

Dictionary: Pollution Parameters

Institute ID Country CodeInstitute CodeInstitute NameAddress…

Dictionary: Institutes

Species Code Biota GroupLatin NameInformation…

Dictionary: Individual Species

*Only unique parameters are counted

 Country 

 Stations 

Stations with data 

Samples 

 Parameters   Values 

 Albania   5  3 17 24 106 Croatia   51   35  487 98 3710 Cyprus   98   88  481 48 2588 Greece   140   47  460 37 2442 Israel   54   41  1278 24 8136 Slovenia   28   28  1196 68 8630 Tunisia   50  41 665 17 1978 Turkey   31  27 519 38 2796 Total   457  310 5103 169* 30386

Samples distribution

10%

9%

9%

26%

23%

13%

10% <1%

 Albania 

 Croatia 

 Cyprus 

 Greece 

 Israel 

 Slovenia 

 Tunisia 

 Turkey 

Values distribution

12%

9%

8%

27%

28%

7%

9% <1%

 Albania 

 Croatia 

 Cyprus 

 Greece 

 Israel  Slovenia 

 Tunisia 

 Turkey 

Samples by Matrix966

266

2519

1352Loads

Sediments

Biota

Sea Water

Stations by Type5

170

78

134

3

3328 Atmosphere Loads

Coastal

Effluents

Hot Spots

Reference

River Loads

Aquaculture waters

Web Serverhttp://195.97.36.231/Medpol

DatabaseSnapshot

andInternet Module

MED POLPHASE IIIDatabase

(MS Access)

Data Loading

Data Management

Working with data

Stations Maps

Stations Information

Samples Information

Internet

Local netw

ork

Database Components

MEDPOL Database Application provides next functionality:•Loading of data reported in standard formats•Data browsing•Data editing•Selection of data on different criteria•Generating different reports•Visualization of data (plots and maps)

Database tools are accessible through the Main Switchboard, which opens at Database startup.

MED POL Database in Internet

Special Web Application – MED POL Database Internet Module - has been developed in order to publish information from the Database Snapshot in Internet. The most popular Internet Browsers: Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator can be used for working with this Web application. Internet Module consists of 2 major parts:

• ASP (Active Server Pages) application for retrieving information from the Database

• ISAPI Map module for dynamic generation of map images

Internet User retrieves information from the Database using Stations query form or Samples query form.

Internet User is restricted to retrieve only metadata (inventory) information from the Database: lists of stations and/or samples, station details, sample details including list of measured parameters, but not parameters values.

User can identify station on the map by clicking on the station marker. Upon receiving result of identification User can obtain all station details.

Monitoring data and Database statistics

Database Contents

BiotaSea Water

SedimentsAir

Loads

MonitoringData

Countries

Matrix Identification

Pollution Parameters

Analysis Methods

Dictionaries Quality Assurance

Data

Laboratories Quality Codes

CRM Analysis Data

Monitoring data are stored in 4 main tables: Stations, Samples, Analyses and Data.

More than 30 tables contain auxiliary information such as MED POL codes, formats, limits, etc. Most important of these are dictionaries containing MED POL computerization codes and reference information on:

The main purpose of the Database is storing and management of the data on trend (and state) monitoring of pollutants in Mediterranean, which are concerned with next monitoring matrices:

• Biota• Sediments• Loads• Sea Water• Air

Types of data vary depending on matrix. These are trace metals, organic contaminants and biomarkers for Biota matrix, wet and dry deposition for Air matrix, etc. A set of 11 reporting formats for different data types has been defined in the MED POL Monitoring Programme. Every format contains:

• common mandatory fields, e.g., laboratory code, station, date and time of sampling, coordinates, etc

• mandatory fields, specific for every data type, e.g., species and tissue code in biota, or samples layer and fraction in sediments

• optional fields – for reporting measured values of additional monitoring parameters

Monitoring data are reported into the MED POL office once per year. Data loading is automated. The special tool is used for loading data in standard formats, fulfilling comprehensive checking of data, such as:

• correspondence of data file structure to standard format• presence of all mandatory fields• correspondence of all codes to MED POL codes• presence and correspondence of parameter units• correspondence of station characteristics to those stored

in the database, etc.Later data is verified by data originators and finally checked against ranges and internal quality codes are assigned.

Algeria, Morocco and Syria are expected to submit data in 2005 since these countries have signed monitoring agreements with UNEP/MAP. Set of predefined statistic and administrative reports allows manager check database contents and control state of data reporting and loading.

The web page with result of database search contains table with found stations (or samples) and map with stations positions. In case country name was included into search criteria, the map of Mediterranean is limited to country extent.