Project Objectives
The U.S. CDC NCEH / ATSDR (National Center for Environmental Health / Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) engaged Emergint to redesign and reengineer its HazDat (Hazardous Substances Database) system and replace it with Sequoia. The purpose of the Sequoia is to track contaminated sites as well as to manage Agency activities surrounding site investigations, studies, and community education. Key objectives of redesigning HazDat were to reduce operating costs, simplify user features and functionality, and meet user requirements and expectations.
Solution
We used the Agile software development lifecycle to rapidly develop Sequoia with advanced web technologies such as AJAX, ASP.NET 3.0, and ad-hoc web mapping (GIS) using Microsoft® Virtual Earth.™ We captured system requirements by interviewing stakeholders and by analyzing the HazDat specifications and application.
Sequoia collects data for:
- Classification of contaminated sites
- Contaminants data, including contaminants found at the site, the media found in, location, concentration levels, and types of exposure
- Populations and community concerns
- Major issues influencing public health at the site
- Overall site categorization concerning the public health hazard presented by the site and details about exposures and the hazards
- Recommendations to reduce or eliminate exposures
Benefits
Emergint designed and built Sequoia to address current business requirements, to provide automated processes, to allow rapid modification and addition of new requirements, and to contain design elements that will allow Sequoia to be easily integrated with other CDC software systems. The final product met current ATSDR user requirements and business needs, addressed gaps in data collection and reporting, and complied with CDC and NCEH/ATSDR standards for security and systems development and CDC standards for hardware.