SOFIA Environmental Database Development and Maintenance

The long-term goal of the SOFIA program is to provide a central archive of data and products for all Department of Interior products related to the south Florida Ecosystem restoration program.

The primary objectives of this project were to 1) provide a central location for the archive of all products and data collected as part of the USGS PES program and related work for the restoration of the South Florida Ecosystem; and 2) provide a means for customers to obtain the archived information. The database was been developed using PostgreSQL, an open source relational database management system. PostgreSQL was selected because it is freely available, widely used, actively maintained and supported, and runs on all modern UNIX-like and Windows based computer systems. As projects were completed or data sets were made available to the public, the data was to be loaded into the database.

The South Florida restoration effort requires multidisciplinary information relating to present and historical conditions for use in responsible decision-making. The South Florida Information Access (SOFIA) database is the cornerstone of information management for the South Florida place-based science program.

Responsible resource management requires a firm scientific basis for decision making. The SOFIA database will provide hydrologic, cartographic, geologic, and biologic data and metadata to aid in the decision process. Ecosystem restoration and sound resource management will benefit south Florida by allowing a balance of uses and interests. The data are available to Federal, State, and local agencies through a web interface and can be retrieved from the SOFIA database. The database has been redesigned to provide storage and access to a greater variety of data types. A new web-based interface will be developed to provide access to the database. The interaction between the database, the other SOFIA products, and other available web-based databases is being evaluated. The database will be updated to provide greater interoperability between the database, other SOFIA products and other web-based databases.