CE 251 ProjectBy Mitch McGeeTruman ChingForrest BakerSean Herman

Introduction• The California Irrigation Management Information System is a

useful database that provides the user with information regarding water quality.

• We aim to take this information, upload it to excel, organize it in a streamlined manner, run a few vba functions through it which will give us the information we want to be able to access.

Goal• Our project goal was to create an automated function that will

sort, organize, and display data which is related to algae production. We were tasked with retrieving hourly data from an online database and providing a means to compare with the experimental results of current Cal Poly grad students.

How to Build the Program• Step 1: Download CIMIS data• Step 2: Import to excel• Step 3: Write code for Formatting, Average functions, Graph

outputs• Step 4: Test Code• Step 5: Debug and Test some more…

Roadblocks• Format of project was not compatible with excel• Table format in data tab of the Ribbon• Changed hourly data to daily data

• Looping a recorded macro• Until cell is empty- blank space

• Could not decipher data easily• Transferred to a different sheet

• Graphs were stacked on top of each other• Put space of 40 cells

Conclusion• Today we have shown you a program that takes a set of data

from an external source, organizes and formats it, performs some statistical analysis, and provides us with useful graphs all in a matter of seconds.

• Moving forward with this program, we can see that it will be an enormous help to the Environmental Engineering Department as it was requested by Dr. Lundqist himself.

• We hope that future classes improve our program even more with features that we didn’t implement

Instructions• Access http://www.cimis.water.ca.gov/ and log in• Go to Data tab• Under the first prompt, change selection to Daily using the dropdown menu• Change selection from “Web Report” to “XML Report”• Select Metric Units• Select desired date range• Cal Poly uses the San Luis Obispo Station, Station ID: 52• “Run Report”• • Open Excel • Select cell A1 on sheet “Algae Data”• On the Ribbon, go to the Data tab. In the “Get External Data” section select “From

Other Sources” and then “From XML Data Import” from the dropdown menu.• In the Downloads folder, select the appropriate XML report• The requisite data is now in place and you are now able to run the program.• ** Unfortunately there is no way to automate the data retrieval process. Not only is

the data on a website, but you must log in to acquire the data.

References• Chapra, S. C. (2010). Introduction to VBA for Excel. Upper

Saddle River: Pearson Higher Education.• http://www.cimis.water.ca.gov/