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Expansion of a tool to analyze and visualize probabilistic survey data

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  • Overview
Many organizations now use probability-based surveys for measuring the condition of aquatic resources. These include some states and tribes, as well as EPA’s National Aquatic Resource Surveys. The R package ‘spsurvey’ has long been used to analyze the data produced from such surveys. However, the analysis functions are somewhat complicated to use, particularly for someone not very familiar with R. Shiny is an R package that provides a GUI to run R code, such that the user does not need to know how to program in R. We have built an R Shiny application with a web browser interface in order to provide more friendly access to the data analysis functions in the ‘spsurvey’ package and allow the visualization of results in a standardized format. This tool is designed to allow the user to upload a file, select the appropriate variables from their dataset for analysis, select options for analysis, run the analysis, and save the results to an output file. Then user can either use these results or upload a file of results to create standardized graphs of the results. For users that are unfamiliar with R, or just uncomfortable writing R code, this application provides a straightforward interface that makes it easy to run the code to analyze and visualize their probability-based survey data.

Impact/Purpose

EPA has used probability-based surveys to assess the nation’s waters as part of the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS). Many states are now also using this approach to measure condition of their aquatic resources. An R package, ‘spsurvey’, was developed to analyze such probability-based survey data, but its functions are somewhat complicated to use and require programming in R code. An R Shiny application that uses a web browser interface was created to allow users to upload data, select variables from input dataset, run analyses, and save the output without having to know how to program in R. The app also allows users to visualize the results of analysis and save those plots for use in reports or presentations. For users, that might be interested in using probability-based surveys but are not proficient in R, this tool provides them with a way to easily analyze the data themselves.

Citation

Blocksom, K. AND G. Stillings. Expansion of a tool to analyze and visualize probabilistic survey data. NARS National Workshop, NA, Virtual, April 05 - 07, 2022.
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Last updated on April 15, 2022
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