DATABASES

Using emerging technologies, a federated databases is employed allowing data to be stored across multiple databases, yet remain accessable, facilitating different types of databases (relational, graph, array) with varying storage methods to be used for improve data and access efficiency, while also enabling methods of ensuring access requirements for datasets can be implemented with more ease.

Through the provision of an API (Application Programming Interface) access to the data is enabled for modellers and others developing code based applications with data returned in JSON/GeoJSON allowing data to be injested straigt from the API into models and for analysis, improving the potential scalability of the developed code. Data can also be returned in other formats for more easy injestion into other appliations, including as ESRI Shapefiles and GeoPackages, more suitable for software based GIS applications.

An associated web-interface allows users to view, query and download data using an easy-to-use interface. Built on the API and a GeoServer instance, this allows users to query data based on locations/boundaries, as well as on attributes, enabling use of this data resource for those wihout the need to engage in code development. Both these endpoints, the API and web-interface, utilise the developed security and metadata protocols, enabling users to only access data they have been granted permission to do so.

The data available continues to evolve as new datasets are added, new versions of existing datasests are added, and data licensing is updated opening up new data to users.