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Design and Implementation of a REST API for the Human Well Being Index (HWBI)
Citation:
Ignatius, A., K. Wolfe, R. Parmar, J. Flaishans, L. Harwell, S. Yee, Tom Purucker, AND M. Galvin. Design and Implementation of a REST API for the Human Well Being Index (HWBI). In Proceedings, 8th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, Toulouse, FRANCE, July 10 - 14, 2016. International Environmental Modelling and Software Society, Manno, Switzerland, 17, (2016).
Impact/Purpose:
In proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software.
Description:
Interoperable software development uses principles of component reuse, systems integration, flexible data transfer, and standardized ontological documentation to promote access, reuse, and integration of code. While interoperability principles are increasingly considered technology standards in software engineering, adoption by the environmental modeling community has been slow. We created an Application Programming Interface (API) for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Human Well-being Index (HWBI) model based on interoperability principles. The HWBI characterizes economic, social, and environmental services during years 2000-2010. For each county in the U.S., specific metrics (e.g., life expectancy, housing affordability, voter turnout) are used to calculate scores for eight domains of well-being: Connection to Nature, Cultural Fulfillment, Education, Health, Leisure Time, Living Standards, Safety and Security, and Social Cohesion. These eight domain values are then used to determine an overall HWBI classification for each U.S. county, state, and region. Interoperability best-practices are demonstrated through the reuse of the code and database for both a web application and a desktop application. The web application accesses the HWBI API services with a browser-based interface to encourage data exploration and obtain feedback from the public. Desktop access is enabled via a plug-in for an agent-based modeling system that uses the HWBI API for output calculations. Our software incorporates best-practices for front- and back-end design that includes automated code testing, data transfer standardization for efficiency and responsiveness, emerging documentation standards, and terminology services and controlled vocabularies to promote reusability.
