GeoSense

A simple web app for exploring British Geological Survey (BGS) geoscientific IoT data.

Important Links:

• Live site available at: GeoSense
• Github Repository: Github

Getting Started:

• yarn install (this project uses yarn v4)
• yarn run dev (to start the development server)

Challenges:

• The total number of data points available for consumption is over 7 million so to avoid being rate limited or causing long wait times careful consideration must be given to how the data is fetched and displayed
• The optimal relationships to fetch all features of interest and then all the related datastreams from the BGS API are not directly available so some data manipulation is required

Known Issues:

• When requesting more than 672 records the API limits the response to 672 records. As dates are not guaranteed to be returned in order from the API some entries may be accidentally excluded. This can be improved by fetching data in smaller chunks and sorting the results before displaying them. See suggested improvements below

Features:

• Display a list of features of interest (filtered to exclude most features without datastreams)
• Display a list of datastreams for a selected feature of interest
• Display the min, max, mean and number of observations for a selected datastream
• Display a graph of the observations for a selected datastream over time
• Dark mode / theme switcher (I couldn't help myself 😅)

Non-functional:

• Caching of API data to reduce load times (thanks React Query!)

Future Improvements:

• Increase test coverage to cover more than 80% of code branches
• Add more robust error handling for failed API requests and edge cases
• Allow users to select a particular time period (year / month) for the observations they wish to see (would aid in reducing the number of observations fetched)
• Optimise data fetching by only selecting required fields in query to reduce API data egress and load times
• Add state management to avoid prop drilling and remove messy useState hooks from Dashboard
• Add Google Maps API for location display (3d Maps)
• Find a way for chart styles to react to theme changes like all other components (current implementation is flaky and convoluted)
• Dynamically apply datastream title to chart title

API Structure:

A visual representation of the relationships between the main entities in the BGS API:

• FeaturesOfInterest: A feature about which observations are made
• Things: Real-world sensors that can be integrated into communication networks
• Observations: Individual measurements recorded at a given point in time
• Datastreams: The properties observed by a thing, and the type of sensor making the observations
• ObservedProperty: Dictionary of properties being observed

Repo Visualisation:

For more info head to: Repo Visualizer