What is Erde
Erde is an on-premises environmental data management system: a self-hosted web application your firm installs and runs on its own Windows server, reached through a browser. It centralizes the data an environmental consultancy works with day to day — the physical Sites it manages, the sampling and monitoring Locations within them, the field and laboratory data collected there, and the tools to import, screen, analyze, and visualize it all. This page explains what Erde is, who it serves, and exactly which product areas ship in V1.
Who Erde is for
Erde serves two readers, and these docs speak to both:
- Evaluators deciding whether Erde fits a firm's workflow — consultancies handling groundwater, site-investigation, and lab data. Erde targets a small-to-mid team: roughly 5–50 concurrent users on a single deployment.
- Practitioners and administrators running it — the administrator who installs the server and completes first-run setup, plus the data managers, field staff, and managers who enter and analyze data day to day.
Each Erde deployment serves one organization. Internally it keeps two databases: a Platform database for users, settings, and the system audit log, and an Application database for the domain data. You can run that domain data on either PostgreSQL or SQL Server, chosen once at setup time. See Deployment for hosting shapes and prerequisites.
What ships in V1
V1 is a deliberately scoped core. The areas below are all present today; later modules are added without breaking changes.
| Product area | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Sites & Locations | Sites, the Locations within them, and the field artifacts at a Location — Wells, Boreholes, Test Pits, and Sediment Cores |
| Sampling & Chain of Custody | Project-scoped Samples and the Chain of Custody (CoC) that tracks them to a lab |
| Laboratory Data | Lab Reports, their Lab Analyses, Lab Results, and result validation |
| Field Monitoring | Water Levels, Well Purges, Field Parameters, and continuous Logger Streams |
| Data Analysis & Screening | Hydrographs, Crosstab, Data Explorer, and screening results against Screening Criteria Sets |
| Importing Data | The Import pipeline for loading field and lab data from files |
| Administration | Users and roles, system settings, licensing, reference data, and audit logs |
The interactive Map tool appears only when an ArcGIS API key is configured.
The core data spine
Erde organizes data along two scopes: a Site is the spatial scope (a physical place under management), and a Project is the work scope (an engagement). Field data hangs off Sites and Locations; sampling and lab data hangs off Projects. Lab data nests one level deeper at a time — a Lab Report groups Lab Analyses, and each Lab Analysis contains Lab Results.
Figure: the core spine — Sites hold Locations; Projects own Samples and Lab Reports; Lab Reports group Lab Analyses, which hold Lab Results.
A Sample optionally hangs off a Location, and a Lab Analysis must anchor to at least one of a field Sample or the lab's report sample — so field-collected results trace back through the spine to the Location and Site where they were taken. For the full model, including Programs, monitoring records, and how every record carries a stable External ID, see the data model.
How it fits together
Sites and Projects are the two anchors everything else attaches to. Knowing which scope a record belongs to tells you who can edit it and how it is found.
| Aspect | Site | Project |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Spatial — a physical place | Work — an engagement |
| Holds | Locations and field monitoring | Samples, Lab Reports, and the CoC |
| Geometry | Has a coordinate and boundary | None of its own |
| Relationship | A Site can belong to many Projects | A Project can span many Sites |