At a Washington, D.C., meeting in 2001 with Congressman Norm Dicks, Paladin Data Systems’ Jim Nall and Gary Macy received a challenge. With all the money spent on salmon restoration, there is really not an effective way to track down the impact, Dicks said — proposing that the group find a solution.

“We just took on the challenge, and started working with agencies in Eastern Washington to see the problems they have and how we can solve them,” Macy said.

The result was EKO-System, or Environmental Knowledge Organizer, a software structure that manages and coordinates scientific and project-management information. The company was recently awarded a $100,000 contract from Walla Walla County to enhance and extend the two-year-old system so it will include some unique requirements from the county’s watershed groups.

“The system provides the opportunity to centralize the reporting and project information, so habitat restoration money can be spent where it is most effective,” Macy said.

Although EKO-System does not analyze the data, it does provide a consistent data-mining tool for retrieving information, and after the data is input once, it can feed into other systems. One component is a GPS-based collection tool, a hand-held device that can be used field staff to directly interact with EKO-System and record data into it.
  The database is entirely Web-based, and Paladin hosts the current system on its server in Poulsbo. The challenge with many other monitoring databases is that they are not available online, limiting their ability to share information among various parties. Several salmon-restoration groups have identified access to information as a critical gap that needs to be filled, and EKO-System can fill that gap while also controlling access as needed.

“The system has been designed to be incredibly powerful while retaining a very user-friendly interface,” said Brian Pursel, EKO-System designer. “The software is designed to not only be a working repository for information, but also share information with the large number of specialized data systems at federal, state and local levels.”

Field researchers, scientists, ecological modelers and data managers will all use EKO as a set of tools to organize the extraordinary amount of ecological information from various sources. They could also track project status, financial goals and long-term scientific impact, breaking it all down by funding source.

Macy said the company has ongoing discussions with the Nisqually Indian Tribe and agencies in the Columbia River Basin for utilizing the software, but a new application is being developed by merging the EKO-System with the one used for Kitsap County’s permitting — which Paladin also designed. The merged program could then be used by the Department of Transportation to streamline their permitting process.