Soon after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history, government officials decided they'd need a new website.

Hence creation of Geoplatform.gov, which integrates online data from multiple agencies connected with responding to the disaster. 

"We need to better integrate data, make it easier to find for the public and stakeholders," said Joseph Kilmavicz, chief information officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the lead agency behind the site. Kilmavicz spoke July 14 at Industry Advisory Council membership meeting in Vienna, Va.

The site, which went online June 15, integrates data about the oil spill's trajectory with fishery area closures, wildlife data and place-based Gulf Coast resources--such as pinpointed locations of oiled shoreline and current positions of deployed research ships--into a customizable interactive map.

Integrating all the data together was a challenge, "because you don't control all data sources,"  Kilmavicz said. Among the agencies acting as data sources are NOAA, the Coast Guard, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Geological Survey, the Homeland Security Department, NASA, as well as affected states. The data arrives in many different formats, and must be synthesized into a usable form, Kilmavicz added.

Even more difficult is the ability to constructively shape the data for consumption, Kilmavicz said. "How do you use information? We may have ten thousand layers, but how do you get information out of it?"

NOAA's data management response also involved a partnership with Google, sharing data to put together another site.

Efforts to staunch the flow of oil caused by the rig's collapse might have succeeded after oil company BP placed a new containment cap on the well July 16. Apparent oil seepage in the seafloor around the blown out well caused the government to tell BP to step up monitoring of the area, according to a statement from the top oil spill government official, retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen.

For more:
- go to Geoplatform.gov
- go to the official site of the Deepwater Horizon response
- see a timeline of the oil spill's spread

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