A Dashboard for the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary Ocean Conditions J. Keaton Thompson • Mark Kumler, PhD Geographic Information Science • University of Redlands Introduction Methods
The Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) is one of fourteen National Marine Sanctuaries protected under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The FGBNMS is 80 to 125 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana (Fig. 1) and conducts monitoring programs tailored to the information needs of the sanctuary. These programs target a wide array of topics involving natural processes, human influences on water, habitat, living resources, and maritime archaeological resources. However, past monitoring programs have been conducted where no research has been able to be obtained because of unsafe or underlying ocean conditions.
Project Solution Currently, it takes a trained user to understand and acquire the ocean conditions of the FGBNMS that are collected in a NOAA data server. An ArcGIS Dashboard will be created to solve the current maritime transportation problem the FGBNMS team is facing with monitoring programs. This Dashboard will display near real-time ocean conditions (currents, wave height, wind, temperature, and salinity) to determine if a monitoring program can be conducted.
ArcGIS Notebook
Fig. 1 Location of the FGBNMS
The near real-time ocean conditions stem from NOAA’s ERDAAP, a data server which provides a consistent dataset from satellites and buoys every hour. An ArcGIS Notebook will provide a method to connect this data server to ArcGIS Online and create a hosted feature layer. The Notebook will be coded to overwrite the hosted feature layers attributes in ArcGIS Online and will be automated to repeat every hour. A user-friendly ArcGIS Dashboard will then be created to display the hosted feature layers attributes. The widgets in the Dashboard will display the near real-time currents, wave height, wind, temperature, and salinity of the FGBNMS.
ArcGIS Online Hosted Feature Layer
Fig. 2 Weathercloud Beta 9.5 Dashboard