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(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

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6.2.1.4 Efficiently Stores Bird Track Information [PB4.1]<br />

Objective<br />

Our goal of Performance Criterion PB4.1, Efficiently Stores Bird Track Information, was to<br />

demonstrate that the avian radar systems being evaluated by the <strong>IVAR</strong> project can store the plots<br />

<strong>and</strong> tracks data they generate on conventional mass storage devices – such as the hard disks that<br />

are st<strong>and</strong>ard items from most personal computer manufacturers today.<br />

Storing long-term records of bird activity locally at a facility is an important requirement for avian<br />

radar systems. These records will form the basis for a wide range of historical analysis of spatial<br />

<strong>and</strong> temporal activity patterns, both within <strong>and</strong> among facilities. The parameters stored in these<br />

records must be rich enough to support both operational applications as well as further research<br />

into the capabilities of avian radar systems, such target classification, data fusions, etc. However,<br />

these requirements <strong>and</strong> applications notwithst<strong>and</strong>ing, the amount of data generated must not be so<br />

voluminous that it requires specialized, <strong>and</strong> therefore expensive, mass storage technology.<br />

We set as our success criterion for PB4.1 that storing one or more year’s worth of plots <strong>and</strong><br />

tracks data locally would be both technically feasible <strong>and</strong> affordable.<br />

Methods<br />

We used long-term datasets from three <strong>IVAR</strong> locations – MCASCP, NASWI, <strong>and</strong> SEA – to<br />

estimate the storage required for one year’s worth of data from the radar(s) at those locations.<br />

The radar systems at all three locations write their plots <strong>and</strong> tracks data to data files on a local<br />

hard drive; at the NASWI <strong>and</strong> SEA locations the local data files were also routinely transferred<br />

to a file server at CEAT for backup <strong>and</strong> analysis.<br />

The estimate of data storage requirements we present below is empirical, based on actual data<br />

from operational radar systems. It was designed to bracket the range of data storage requirements<br />

a user is likely to encounter with a continuously-operating avian radar system. We have made no<br />

attempt to explain the differences in the storage requirements from one dataset another. Common<br />

factors that might contribute to such differences include:<br />

• Number of targets<br />

• Maximum digitization range<br />

• Radar sensitivity settings<br />

• Clutter (increases detections, or plots, that do not become tracks)<br />

• Antenna beam width (sampling volume)<br />

• Radar down-time<br />

• Loss of network connectivity (for streamed data)<br />

It should also be noted that we have estimated the storage requirements for the plots <strong>and</strong> tracks<br />

data extracted from the raw digital radar images, <strong>and</strong> not from the raw digital signals themselves.<br />

The storage requirements for the raw digital data are much higher – on the order of 350<br />

Mb/minute of operation.<br />

Results<br />

Table 6-16 enumerates the amount of mass storage required to store the plots & tracks data files<br />

generated over a one-year period by the radars at the MCASCP, NASWI, <strong>and</strong> SEA study<br />

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