Data Integration and Management for Mining

The UArizona Superfund Research Center focuses on the human health effects of mine waste contamination, particularly arsenic in mining tailings, the left-over material from operations. This and other toxic minerals can pollute groundwater, leading to exposure by drinking it. Toxin-laden dust from active and closed mining operations is another source of potentially unhealthy exposure.

With regular funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the center combines the research and publishing power of five UArizona colleges: agriculture and life sciences, medicine, pharmacy, science and public health. With active research going on across these disciplines, a single source for mining industry players to access large datasets and parse information would help them share, analyze and test hypotheses stemming from results coming out of the center.

The project supports a software engineer with the center’s data management and analysis core. That person is developing visualization software that will illustrate mining-related datasets on a web application. The center will host the application server as a central location that houses and analyzes data that the center publishes. The project also will develop state-of-the-art software and analytics to combine the findings of research from several scientific research projects into new insights.

For more information on this project, please contact: Aikseng Ooi