Managing environmental knowledge and the necessary IT tools - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 440

Figure 12.5 Entry page of the ENFO Portal (2013).

Because of the different type and organization of the individual parts of the ENFO
portal, different IT tools are used:

- Home, Photos (image catalogs), E-learning, Forum: Drupal CMS, MySQL

database;

- Glossary: MySQL database and home-made PHP and JavaScript code;

- Risk management database: MySQL database and home-made PHP and JavaScript

code;

- Digital maps: PostGIS database, OpenLayers, GeoExt and home-made JavaScript.

Drupal CMS was customized to give an individual outlook (styles, colors, etc.) to
the portal. Image catalogs and the forum use standard Drupal extension modules.
An important part of the ENFO services is the risk management database
(MOKKA database, 2013) with its datasheets on general information, assess-
ment/monitoring methods, environmental technologies and the characterization of
waste/by-products. The database is designed to store a series of various datasheets,
which are filled out online.
Information about methods and technologies are organized into detailed
datasheets in the database. Data stored in the different datasheets are divided into
several pages (database tables) to get a normalized relational database (Harrington,
2002). The pages belonging to the same datasheet are organized into a tree structure.
To have the most flexible database system and user interface, not only the relevant data
of the methods and models are stored in the database but the form definitions as well.
A PHP framework was developed to generate the forms from the stored definition.
The structure of the database is shown in Figure 12.6.