Geographic information systems (GIS) applications bring another aspect to traditional databases... geography. Since the majority of environmental data is spatially correlated, GIS is a vital tool for environmental site characterization. The explosion of PC-based systems has made GIS widely accessible and affordable. Tetra Tech utilizes the power of GIS to both analyze environmental site data and to establish such systems for our clients.

EMAGIS is designed to help manage and graphically visualize environmental site data. EMAGIS is a vector-based GIS program for the MapInfo Professional desktop mapping program and Microsoft Windows. The EMAGIS program provides several environmental site characterization tools that can be used in conjunction with optional products including Surfer for Windows, AVS/Express, EVS, GMS, Excel, and Vertical Mapper. These tools include:

• Surfer for Windows Contouring Module that displays spatial distributions of data. EMAGIS can also generate multiple contours for different sampling events and then create an AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) video file

• A Geostatistics module that has tools for variogram modeling, kriging, and cokriging in 2-D and 3-D. Create files that can be used with leading 3-D visualization and groundwater modeling packages, including AVS/Express, EVS, and GMS

• A Cross-section Generator Module that can show groundwater monitoring wells and their screened intervals, groundwater elevations, soil and groundwater quality, and stratigraphic information.  A new wizard was developed to make creation of profiles easier, and also allows for recreation of sections after new wells or additional sampling has been performed

• A Contaminant Correlations Module that includes pie charts, chemical fingerprints, Stiff diagrams, and scatterplots

• A Risk Assessment Module that calculates and graphically displays human health risks to air, soil, and groundwater

• A Statistical Trend Analysis Module that lets the user test for statistically significant trends in contaminant levels or groundwater elevation levels over time

• Descriptive Statistics and Outlier Analysis modules calculates standard statistics of a given data set and flag statistical outliers in a database

• A Geochemical Checks module that  flags water and soil samples violating basic laws of chemistry or other rules-of-thumb applied in geochemistry

• A Soil Concentration Profiles Module that simplifies soil quality data plotting

• A PhotoView Module that can display site photos and descriptions

• Graphing ability for time-series plots via links to Microsoft Excel.  Automated routines for plotting of groundwater hydrographs from hundreds of wells is included

• For systems equipped with sound cards, each module can provide verbal instructions by using a text-to-speech technology created by First Byte.  Example sound wav file (60 KB)

The EMAGIS support page has a demo version for download that also contains the User's Manual in Microsoft Word format.  You can see exactly how to use EMAGIS or to see the methodology behind the modules browse the online help.   The setup program for the demo version is password protected, so for that or for more information contact EMAGIS support at (925) 283-3771 or email emagis.support@tetratech.com 

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