NMDB Neutron Monitor Database

The Neutron Monitor Database (NMDB) Project started in January 2008 and officially ended at January 2010. We still continue support this effort till today. The NMDB was a FP7 project. We were leading the Work package 3 of the project that objective was to give guidelines on data acquisition and we was contributing on Work Package 2 Database installation and mirror Athens University mirror server, in Work package 4 with give support to users that want to access data. An upgrade of GLE alert system that use NMDB Data implemented.We also supported all National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Cosmic ray group efforts on the project.

More sprecific the WP3 discription as it described by the project was:

WP3 Guidelines for data acquisition

The objective of this work package is to issue a standard set of rules for data acquisition for the stations represented in the NMDB project and for future contributors, using both standard format and resolution (1–hour, 1–minute). The work will be based on the architectural design provided by WP2. A pre-requisite is to technically prepare all participating stations in order to feed their data into the central database. The working steps are divided into two main categories:
1. Feed data to the database
1.1 All information regarding the participating NM stations will be collected in an archive. It will contain the present status of every station with reference to the specific characteristics of the station, as hardware – software capabilities; local network infrastructure and power supply systems needs. This information is essential for the preparatory phase of WP3 with a view to establish a common data format output. For this purpose an online questionary has been realized by the Athens Cosmic Ray Group.
1.2 All groups involved in this effort should help setting specifications for a system compatible for a central database. This step will focus on the implementation of the feedback of every NM station to the specified requests of the central database (WP2).
1.3 Support the existing infrastructure of each NM station in order to be compatible with the NMDB needs. This means that every participating station will have to improve either their registration system and/or the ability to provide first quality data. For this reason registration systems should be upgraded in order to provide 1-minute data update. At this point all NM stations should be in place to feed data to the database
2. Take advantage of all experienced contributors and create a modern registration system which could be the new guide reference system
2.1 Design a prototype registration system which will consider the database needs (WP2), and the local (already existing) data archiving software . This will result in a new, reliable, cost-effective and modular deployment of software and hardware which will be easy to install and use. It will guarantee the common data format and will be the key step for future applications of the central database.
2.2 The prototype registration system that will consider all the above steps will be implemented, and a demo version will be available to all participating stations.
Participants of WP3: National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) & ISNet - WP Leader, Institute for Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation by Pushkov (IZMIRAN), Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), Observatoire de Paris (OBSPARIS), Yerevan Physics Institute (ARAGATS), Tel Aviv University (TAU), University of Oulu (UOULU), Institute of Ionosphere (ALMATY), Institute of Experimental Physics SAS (KOSICE).

A Document that describes a prototype system implementation

This document describes the design of a modern data acquisition system based on a PC, in the frame of NMDB project – which constitutes del. 3.4. The objective of this design was to meet all the specifications of the NMDB project and the del. 3.3. The system had to gather all parameters that the NMDB requires. The design focused on systems and subsystem that a NM station can easily locate worldwide, in order to reproduce either the whole system or parts of it. Every system or subsystem has a specific proposed device. Nevertheless, in some cases a NM station can use equivalent systems. The basic system is a typical Personal Computer (Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 512MB Ram, 80Gbyte hard disk). A selection of a Microsoft Windows XP SP3, operating system, has been performed. The whole design is cost-effective. Thus, every NM station that needs to send data to the NMDB, is able to make use of the design. In the current document a description of the software that is used in order to push the registered data to the NMDB is omitted, due to the fact that this kind of software has already been described in WP2 and WP4.

Click the following link to read: The document