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H. Goodwin and R. Palerud
Data Input to the Environmental Database
The database was designed primarily to store the vast amounts of data Akvaplan-niva
has collected each year from the North Sea environmental surveys around oil
installations, and from scientific cruises in the Arctic. Other data includes that collected
by scientists on fieldwork, both freshwater and marine samples. An interface built in
MS Access provides a simple user interface for input of environmental data collected on
cruises, and from fieldwork. The interface guides the user through a series of screens for
inputting information about the sampling location, the type of sample taken (e.g.
sediment or fish sample), sampling method, type of analysis performed, and the results
of analysis returned from the laboratory (e.g. concentration of heavy metals in seabed
surface sediments). Some standard queries have been written in MS Access to generate
output for standard reports for different environmental surveys, and to retrieve the data
and manipulate it into a suitable format for use in statistical analyses.
GIS Interface
The second interface is the GIS interface that offers a wide range of data retrieval,