p$pT FJgmm PRACTICAL, AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY
Providing data to the power industry NUS Corp.’s designed computer system is an integral part of data gathering, information and analysis, and services used in environmental impact studies and monitoring programs The design, location, construction and continued safe operation of nuclear power plants, fossil-fuel power generating plants, mining operations and other large-scale energy-related installations depends on pulling together almost unimaginable masses of raw data into coherent, understandable, useful information. NUS Corp. (Pittsburgh, Pa.) supports this important work by providing consulting and engineering services. Its Ecological Services Division provides scientific expertise, management support and documentation for more than 200 such data collection projects annually. Then NUS clients utilize the resultant information in a wide variety of planning, construction and environmental monitoring projects including oil-shale operations, coal exploration, deepwater tanker ports, nuclear power plants and many others. These projects involve the collection and processing of data related to everything from hydrology and seismology to physics and microbiology. The statisticians and data processing personnel at the N U S division handle from 390 000 to 780 000 data records each year. The voluminous reports that are the result of extensive field sampling, lab analysis, and statistical evaluation are used by client’s design and operations engineers, in court records, in public hearings and as resource materials by governmental regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These reports, both their content and the procedures used to prepare them, affect the investment of billions 26
Environmental Science & Technology
of dollars and man-hours. They may be audited at any time; therefore, complete documentation and data accuracy are crucial. The cost of any given N U S project averages from $1-2 million, for example, or, about 2-3% of the total cost for building a nuclear power plant. Data entry and data preparation account for about 10% of the total budget for an environmental impact study or monitoring program. The computer system The N U S division utilizes a Mohawk Data Sciences (MDS) System 2409 key-disk data energy system. NUS manager of data analysis and biostatistical studies Henry Hess says that the company’s major reasons for implementing the MDS System 2409 three years ago were its ability:
NUS Corp.3 Hess 200 data collection projects annually
to achieve the data entry accuracy and productivity rates essential to valid statistical evaluation to provide data management and entry system to keep researchers abreast of current publications in their fields. “These areas continue to be our most important areas of usage,” Hess says. “At NUS, our job is to apply the skills and discipline of modern technology, at all levels, to maintaining the complex balance between the environment and man’s need for energy. We feel that the MDS System 2409 is a small, but important, tool in helping us to accomplish that task.” The MDS configuration was implemented on September 1, 1974 to replace old IBM 129 keypunch equipment. It includes a 65K MDS System 2409 used for data entry, validation, editing and concurrent remote-batch communications with an IBM 370/ 168 and 370/ 158 located at an outside services vendor in Pittsburgh and CDC 6400 in McLean, Va. The specifics: the communications links are 4800 baud dialups. The system also includes five keystations; four nine-track, 800 bpi tape drives; a 400 cpm card reader; a teletype console; and a dual disk system with a combined storage capacity of 4 056 000 bytes. For data management This application, implemented last May, is the first stage in a project to gather and organize data on which EPA can base effluent guidelines for the iron and steel industry. Working with the Cyrus Wm. Rice Division of NUS, the Ecological Sciences Division created such a data entry and man-
agement system to run on the MDS 2409. Responses to inch-thick questionnaires sent out to management personnel in this industry are being keyed-in on the System 2409, validated, edited and batched for data management on the IBM 370/168 in Pitts-
Entering data. Operator assures the required data accuracy with a keydisk system-a Mohawk Data Sciences 2409 System
burgh. To date, more than 400 questionnaires have been received and entered, and 150 000 records have been produced. For information retrieval In 1975, Hess’s staff addressed the problem of keeping pace with new developments in the ecological sciences by creating an information retrieval system on the MDS System 2409. The application, written in MDL (Mohawk Data Language), provides an easily accessible and current bibliography of publication for the scientific personnel a t Pittsburgh. More than 8.3 million documents-reprints of journal articles, abstract sheets and technical materials-can be listed on two disks. A researcher who needs to review a specific subject area may reference as many as 20 000 key words that are included in the file and which may be modified by as many as 50 operands. The system automatically examines 2000 documents per second. For example, one might key in “FISH, 1974, OHIO” and get back a complete list of all publications relative to ecological studies on fish in the state of Ohio either performed or published in 1974. The list includes title, author, publication and publication data. The files are updated periodically in order
to keep them current. Hess cites the ease of code generation with M D L as a factor in designing the system to run on the System 2409. For aquatic information The first use of the System 2409, involving a unique state-of-the-art enhancement of MDS’ Key-Disk Operating System (KDOS), was created to handle the highly specialized data entry requirements of the NUS division. Called EDVAL (Ecological Data Validation System), the system allows keystation operators to enter the taxonomic classifications of biological samples with a minimum number of keystrokes and, therefore, a reduced risk of error. Essentially, the purpose of EDVAL was to reduce the long and complex Latin names to the shortest possible unique form, and to provide operators with no special training in the sciences with a means of looking up correct phylogenetic classifications. The number of biological entities occurring in a given aquatic sample, for example, are posted on taxonomic lab sheets, which become source documents for data entry. These entities may includes fish, ichthyoplankton (fish eggs, larvae and post-larvae), phytoplankton (microscopic aquatic plants), zooplankton (miscroscopic aquatic animals), and benthic macroinvertebrates (organisms that live in the substrates of lakes, rivers or streams). A given entry may require as many as two or three fields to uniquely classify it. In order to meet this requirement, Hess’ staff replaced a standard MDS table handler with a larger resident disk table handler. Using EDVAL, the operator has only to key-in a minimum number of characters; usually the first four or five are sufficient. At that point, the EDVAL software takes over and displays the entire name and phylogenetic classification. EDVAL also displays the number of fields required to classify the biological entity. If family, genus, species and variety are needed, these too may be accessed quickly from the data stored on disk. Hess explains, “EDVAL and the editing and validation capabilities of the MDS System 2409 have reduced our data entry error rate from 30% to 1-2%. Further, we have the ability to go back and update, delete or change data stored on the disk. The ability is especially important in light of the fact that new scientific discoveries and sampling methods sometimes create the need for new or modified formats.”
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Volume 12, Number 1, January 1978
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