Building a Flow

1
Building a Flow

• Some Practical Advice Lessons Learned
• Nick Mangus, US EPA / OAR

2
AQS Background

• The most important system at EPA, alphabetically
• Managed and operated in RTP, NC
• 1,000 air monitoring sites around the country
• 200 parameters collected
• Data is used to determine non-attainment areas
  and by health researchers
• We get almost 2M data points per week from State,
  local, and tribal agencies (several hundred
  files)
• Highest volume flow at EPA
• 4th(?) generation of system
• Long legacy history
• Electronic data collection
• Processes
• Formats

3
AQS Flow Timeline

• Late 2004 Schema (v1) released
• Early 2005 AQS accepts node flows and XML data
• Saint Regis Mohawk first to do both!
• Several have tested or done a few submissions
• Only a few regularly submit via the node flow
• Soon Schema and FCD version 2 released

4
Development The EN Website

• Already covered
• Developing a flow
• Build an Exchange button on sidebar
• ? Flow Documentation Checklist
• Things you have to develop
• Schema
• Namespace
• Conformance Report
• DET
• Sample instance document
• FCD (Flow Configuration Document)
• Other optional documents

5
Keep it Simple

• All in all, it is a longish list
• Thats the price for best practices
• While theres a lot to do, its relatively simple
• Really only two products to focus on
• Schema
• FCD
• Others are subs to these (although DET may
  guide)
• Read and understand all those other documents on
  the web site
• Best practices, schema architecture, etc.
• Ask for help when you dont understand
• mentor, helpdesk, etc.

6
Approach as an Engineering Problem

• This is not just a format change
• Youre changing the way you do business
• Look for opportunities
• So treat like any other software engineering
  project
• Take the long view
• Consider the business goals
• Make the users happy
• Consider over-the-horizon users
• stylesheets
• Many decisions to be made
• Technical
• Process
• They will impact each other

7
Users Partners

• Work with your partners
• Fundamentally, youre reaching a new agreement on
  how you will share data
• Understand each others constraints
• AQS biz rules do not allow for total replacement
  submissions only transactions
• Be patient
• Lots of learning going on, lots of different
  players
• Put priority on gathering information
• You need a stable baseline to work from
• Shifting environments will shake project
• Regulations, budgets, schedules, etc.
• AQS had to adapt to ESAR immediately
• Think outside your box look for additional
  benefits
• AQS flow was able to bring together AQS and
  AirNow format after many years of separation