Motivation
The Government of British Columbia’s Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch (FAIB) needed practical experience with Canadian-based cloud infrastructure to support its data storage and analysis work. The team wanted to assess suitable infrastructure specifications, work with large spatial datasets, and build the skills to set up, maintain, and use cloud servers with minimal ongoing support.
The project
Analythium worked with FAIB to scope the infrastructure and provide hands-on training. The cloud environment used DigitalOcean and included separate database servers with PostgreSQL and PostGIS for FAIB to support the Climate Change Informed Species Selection (CCISS) Shiny app.
The work included setting up a private GitHub repository for training documentation and weekly training sessions. Documentation covered command-line setup, security, useful server-management commands, database and compute server setup, storage volumes, and connecting to PostgreSQL from R and RStudio.
Our results
FAIB received training on accessing and testing cloud servers, including transferring large spatial datasets, and R Markdown-based documentation for setting up, maintaining, and using the environment. Two similarly configured PostgreSQL/PostGIS database servers supported the FAIB and CCISS data and user groups. These activities strengthened the branch’s ability to incorporate cloud computing into their data workflows.