ABSTRACT
The size and complexity of environmental investigation and monitoring programs at industrial facilities continue to increase. Consequently the amount of environmental data, both at operating facilities and orphan sites, is growing as well. The volume of data often exceeds the capacity of simple tools like paper reports and spreadsheets. When that happens it is appropriate to implement a more powerful data management system and often the system of choice is a relational database manager. This section provides a top-down discussion of management of environmental data. It focuses on the purpose and goals of environmental data management, and on the types and locations of data storage. These issues should always be resolved before an electronic (or in fact any) data management system should be implemented.
