Fraym Data Management Platform

Designing geodata management

Fraym “delivers unprecedented, localized information about population characteristics and behaviors” (Fraym | Advanced data on communities around the world, n.d.). The data used ranges from raster and vector data to survey and related reference data.This data and the results of analysis workflows must be stored and managed in a sustainable and similar manner. Since the amount of data Fraym stores exceeded a manually manageable threshold, they needed to create a modern and scalable solution that takes Geo-IT standards into account. The main project goal was to identify, discuss and document the requirements for Fraym’s Data Management Platform (DMP) with a particular focus on geo-spatial aspects. 52°North supported and advised Fraym in their development of solutions for storing and managing geo-spatial data required for data analysis workflows.

The initial requirements analysis phase featured a remote User Story Workshop. Based on the user requirements collected at the workshop, 52°North designed an overall architecture for the DMP. Using arc42 as a lightweight, but flexible architecture documentation concept, we identified and designed the DMP’s central components to the required level of detail.

The project finalized the implementation phase in 2021. 52°North developed the DMP using cutting-edge technology (e.g. AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service, auto-scaling of underlying business logic components, S3 for data storage). We realized specific solutions that focus on the requirements of data ingestion and metadata management on top of the existing GeoNode and Django framework. A special focus was on the extensibility of the ingestion and metadata framework to enable lightweight adjustments by Fraym staff. Raster data is stored and managed in S3 buckets while vector data is hosted in a PostGIS data based and exposed via GeoServer.

Fraym, USA