Data administrators

Each group that would like to get involved with coastal monitoring can apply for one of their members to become a data administrator. The data administrator will be given a login account for the Coastal Monitoring Database and will be responsible for:

• Creating new sites and transects in the database for the group.
• Entering the survey data to the database after a survey has been performed.

The data administrator doesn’t need to be a computer expert; creating sites/transects and entering survey data is an easy task.

Apply for a data administrator account

Data hierarchy

In the Coastal Monitoring Database survey data is organised according to the following hierarchy:

• Region (e.g. Bay of Plenty). A region contains one or more locations.
• Location (e.g. Maketu). A location contains one or more sites.
• Site (e.g. Newdicks Beach). A site contains several transects.
• Transect (e.g. 1378, a unique number that is assigned to the transect when it is created in the database). A transect will have several surveys performed on it over time.
• Survey (e.g. 12 March 2018, the date the survey was performed).

Checking that a site exists in the database

A site must exist in the database before survey sheets can be printed for transects at the site. If your upcoming survey is for an existing transect then it’s likely the site will already exist in the database. You can check by browsing through the data hierarchy in the Survey Data or Print Survey Sheets sections of the website.

If you will be establishing a new site or you find that your survey site does not exist in the Coastal Monitoring Database then please ask your group’s data administrator to log into the database and create the site.