Geoinformatics
Geoinformatics is a term that appears to have been independently coined by several groups around the world to describe a variety of efforts to promote collaboration between computer science and the geosciences to solve complex scientific questions. Fostered by the leadership within the National Science Foundation (NSF), Geoinformatics has emerged as an initiative within the Earth Sciences Division to address the growing recognition that the Earth functions as a complex system and that existing information science infrastructure and practice used by the geoscience community are inadequate to address the many difficult problems posed by this system. In addition, there is now widespread recognition that successfully addressing these problems requires integrative and innovative approaches to analyzing, modeling, and developing extensive and diverse data sets. Currently, the chaotic distribution of available data sets, lack of documentation about them, and lack of easy-to-use access tools and computer modeling and analysis codes are major obstacles for scientists and educators alike. However, recent advances in fields such as computational methods, visualization, and database interoperability provide practical means to overcome such problems. Thus, Geoinformatics can be thought as the field in which geoscientists and computer scientists are working together to provide the means to address a variety of complex scientific questions using advanced information technologies and integrated analysis.
Building on the geoscience/computer science partnership fostered by PACES and our early database construction and data dissemination efforts, our group has played an active role in the Geoinformatics initiative since its early days. In collaboration with a number of colleagues, we have been awarded NSF grants to support the Southwest GeoNet and GeoScience Network projects.
