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CGI Breathes New Life into the Quebec Environment Department’s Climatology
System
Like all of the world’s meteorological services, the climatology
division of Quebec Environment Department was facing problems caused by
excessive volumes of data that required processing and validating within
extremely tight timeframes. In fact, to respond to the needs of its internal
and external clients, the department had to handle some 40 million pieces
of information annually, which translated into 74,000 statistics flowing
in from 250 sampling sites across Quebec daily. Moreover, at that time,
processing the data required five different systems and was neither reliable
nor fast – two essential qualities when striving for efficiency in
this field! That’s when the Department called on CGI for help.
CGI’s team of 11 professionals faced a significant challenge: to
ensure that each of the environmental monitors installed at the 250 sites
be capable of delivering precise, reliable data to meteorologists. The
data then had to be integrated in real time into an information flow that
would allow the required, approved results to be rapidly produced. The
alternative was about as reliable as going back to the Almanac!
The Challenge
The meteorological project had to first and foremost offset the department’s
inability to verify and validate, in person and on an hourly basis, the
smooth operation of thousands of monitors scattered over a vast geographical
area. The meteorologists needed an integrated system to validate and transform
the data gathered, which would rapidly alert them to any equipment malfunction.
Of course, added to this was the challenge of finding a way to substantially
accelerate the processing of this considerable volume of information.
The Quebec Environment Department had been operating to this point with
five different computer systems, which tallied the information in differing
ways. The challenge for the CGI team was therefore to work with the meteorologists
to design and implement a single system, architecture included, that would
be based on the Oracle database system and allow a variety of data to
be integrated in real time. The solution also required a mechanism to
automatically validate the results.
The Strategy
There’s no question that the vast range of expertise of the team
members, recruited from within CGI, was a key success factor in the project.
The problems associated with the measuring instruments, the extraordinary
volume of data, and the integration of five systems into just one were
approached head-on by experts in each of these domains.
An initial strategy to resolve the data validation problem was developed,
based on validation in absolute values and through peripheral comparison
of the instruments. In the new system, data from each of the neighboring
stations is compared, and any significant deviation automatically signals
a malfunction of the field units.
The CGI team also reviewed the entire real-time data integration process
in order to resolve the problems created in each of the processing steps.
Data entry, a crucial process step that had posed particular problems
(as it was often a source of errors), was revamped and reintegrated into
the global system, thus increasing its reliability and speed.
The Technology
- Oracle 7.3; Windows NT; Excel 5.0; Word 6.0; Powerbuilder 5.0.04; PFC;
ObjectCycle; ArcView-spatial analyst/Avenue; Access; AMC Designor (PowerDesignor).
The Results
Following the implementation and a transition period of a few months,
during which CGI’s experts were involved in the technological transfer
and personnel training, the new system’s efficiency quickly surpassed
the original estimates. “CGI’s performance in implementing the
new system was remarkable,” stated Paul Lamb, who managed the project
for the Department. “Simply in terms of the volume of data processed
in real time, the challenge was extraordinary. After a year and a half
in operation, the results are excellent. CGI truly knew how to resolve
our problems.”
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