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Collaborative Research Web Application At Biosphere2Center

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Bio sphere2Center, a non-profit educational and research affiliate of Columbus University, is one of the largest living laboratories in the world. In its biosphere, researchers are able to study plants and other life within a controlled environment by creating artificial biomes. The main data used to conduct research are the environmental measurements collected from sensors located throughout the biosphere. So far, B2C has collected about 1 Terabyte of data. From a high level perspective, such research projects can be divided into experiment section, setup, actual experimentation, analysis, and finally publishing the results. This process may require collaboration between scientists at remote locations.

Through user interviews we discovered the main problems that scientists face when trying to conduct research: the step learning curve required to access environmental measurement, the different formatting requirements to conduct data analysis, and collaborating with others without compromising security. 'eBiome' was created to address these problems. One of the challenges in designing eBiome's database and extranet application was to integrate the existing environmental measurement data and to take into account data anomalies.

Since Biosphere2Center provides sensor measurements as a service to the scientific community, eBiome was designed to help internal and external users access this data. eBiome allows users to subscribe to, or create, their own projects. A project can be defined as a workspace for collaborative research where researchers can share project analysis reports. Once inside a project, a user can easily create reports and display relevant sensor data in the desired format and for a specified time interval. Each report can include data from individual sensors or several sensor arrays (i.e. a logical groups of sensors). User can create their own sensor arrays and reuse them in their project reports.

This system does not address every user requirement identified. Further improvements can be made to the system by including additional functionality: export and copy of reports & sensors, plotting report data, averaging data, and providing different date formats.

The system consists of an Oracle 8 relational database and an extranet application. Unlike traditional web applications, which use server-side scripts, eBiome's design is based on the WebMacro template engine framework. The result is a cross-platform, portable, extensible, and customizable web application. For example, additional functionality can be added or the visual look and feel can be changed with minimal impact. The eBiome architecture provides a clean separation of its functions, greatly improving the maintainability and enhancement potential of the system.

Customers implementation of the eBiome includes software installation, database preparation, and configuration. In addition, a user manual or help are included with the system.

Please click HERE for a PowerPoint presentation of the project.

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