Fusality for Stream and Field

Abstract

This project provides users with a means to organize, graph, and analyze specific data recorded from Stroubles Creek. The website will be utilized by an Undergraduate Biological Systems Engineering class to help with their labs that deal with the health of Stroubles Creek. Our team was designated with the task of improving a website that was created by a past Computer Science capstone team. The website we started with was barely functional and could not yet be used by the Undergraduate Biological Systems Engineering class. The website required many modifications in both the front end interface as well as the backend. Our team split up into three two-person groups based off of skill and desired learning objectives. These teams include a backend team, a front end user-interface team, and a data graphing team. The main front-end improvements that were enacted on the website include a complete overhaul of the entire user-interface and the addition of a usable navigation bar that enables users to easily use all features of the website. Backend improvements include major changes to the tables in the MySQL database as well as PHP functions that make utilizing the database extremely easy for the data graphing team. The changes made to the database tables allowed for a more straightforward representation of the data and enabled saving graphs for a specific experiment. Most of the improvements were on the data graphing aspect of the website. Users are now able to analyze six years of data collected from Stroubles Creek. They can analyze this data by creating either line graphs or scatter plots of whatever specific creek data they want. The graphs provide users with the ability to see trends in creek health over the course of many years. Currently, the website is ready to be used by Undergraduate Biological Systems Engineering classes. It provides all the functionality that our client required and does so in a clean, easy-to-use manner. Even though the website is ready for use, there are still areas that can be improved upon. These areas include more graph options, easier ways to upload new data sets, graphing large amounts of data points, and the aesthetics of the graphs.