Diagrammatic Representation of Environmental Monitoring Data

The marked increase in the number of environmental problems, combined with the increase in their intensity and spatial extent, has resulted in an ever-increasing need for constant monitoring. This is complicated by the occurrence of new and complicated environmental issues that often prevent a thorough understanding of the entire monitoring framework. In the present study, a diagrammatic method was developed to present the entire framework of a monitoring plan. The diagram was separated into three sections- "Problem Section", "Research Process and Data Section" and "Entities Section" - to clearly present the disparate relationships between monitoring objectives and the monitoring procedure. Notation of the diagrams was undertaken using Unified Modeling Language (UML). A hypothetical monitoring plan for an environmental problem was designed to assess usefulness of the diagrammatic method. The diagram was capable of reviewing and revising the monitoring plan and could be used to select a monitoring procedure according to the monitoring objectives of the plan. The results suggested that this diagrammatic method was effective for designing an appropriate monitoring plan for a given monitoring objective.