Full document / COSOC-W-86-002 - the National Sea Grant Library

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History
ODES was originally developed by the Marine Operations Division
of the U.S. EBA Office of Marine and Estuarine Protection to support
the 301(h) sewage discharge program of the Clean Water Act. Under
this program, publicly owned sewage treatment plants may apply for
waivers from the requirements for secondary treatment of sewage
effluent. If a waiver is granted, dischargers are required to
collect and submit environmental monitoring data to the U.S. EPA.
ODES was designed to provioe both dischargers and the U.S. EPA with
the ability to use this environmental data in assessing the impacts
of the sewage discharges on the marine environment.
The ODES system has recently expanded to include data from the
U.S. EPA ocean dumping and estuarine programs. Data from Puget
Sound, several northeastern estuaries, and baseline surveys at the
106-mile deep-water dump site off the New Jersey coast are being
added to ODES.
System Design
Specific objectives that guided develop of ODES included:
o Rapid, multiuser access to quality assured environ
mental data
o Mem-driven operationwith no requirements for knowledge
of computer programing
o Access to powerful statistical and analytical procedures
o Graphical display of data, including data overlays on
o Retrieval of information in a variety of formats
o Downloading information to microcomputers.
The software that was selected to meet these objectives reside
on the U.S. EPA IBM 3090 mainframe. The data within the system are
stored in SAS files. These files are integrated, allowing simultaneous
access to a variety of data (e.g., sediment chemistry and benthos).
COES information maybe accessed for the purpose of data retrievals
and analysis. Users, however, do not interact directly with the
system at this applications program level. Instead, individuals
logged onto ODES view menus and respond to prompts produced by a
coonand processor and editor. Users respond to the system prompts
generated by this editor by entering simple English contends. The
coirraand processor takes these responses and, using the appropriate
applications programs, performs the requested analysis. Numerous