Time Series Analyst: Interactive Online Visualization of Standards Based Environmental Time Series Data

Session A2: Interoperability, Reusability, and Integrated Systems

Visualization is a common need of many researchers, organizations, and projects that collect and use environmental sensor data. Web-based tools can provide screening-level visualization and data analysis functionality for users with a range of technical expertise. However, it is difficult to integrate data from multiple sources due to syntactic and semantic differences in data formats and different data delivery mechanisms that are not always interoperable. We developed an open-source time series visualization tool called the Time Series Analyst (TSA) that integrates data from multiple sources using web service interfaces and a standardized data encoding format. The TSA provides multiple types of visualization presented through a web browser. Important functionality includes a map-based interface and faceted filters to narrow the selection and display of a large number of data series. Data are retrieved using web services that comply with standards established by the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS), and any time series dataset published using the CUAHSI HIS can be visualized using TSA. Finally, we present a case study demonstrating how TSA can be used to visualize data from a large-scale environmental sensor network.