Earth and space science informatics infrastructure

Abstract

Opportunities for countless scientific discoveries are anticipated from data intensive research and the application of computational methods and visualization tools to vast and growing data stores. These opportunities allow scientists to generate new questions, expose unseen or novel patterns, and to answer questions that challenge our global societies (Newman et al. 2003; Kelling et al. 2009). Data intensive research depends on the acquisition, organization and longterm management of these data collections. Such research also depends on the development and implementation of tools and systems for data integration, retrieval, and analysis. The emergent fields of informatics and data curation aim to meet these challenges, and each will require a skilled, professional workforce to meet the needs of the 21st century scientific enterprise. Informatics is “the science of information,” its focus of study is “the representation, processing, and communication of information in natural and artificial systems” (Fourman 2002). An emerging application area for informatics research is within the Earth and space sciences—sometimes referred to as geoinformatics. The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a conglomerate of 50,000 Earth and space science researchers, has developed a focus group “concerned with issues of data management and analysis, large-scale computational experimentation and modeling, and hardware and software infrastructure needs, which ultimately provide the capability to change data systems into knowledge systems that support the range of Earth and space science interests.” In August of 2009 a group of graduate students and established researchers met for a three-day geoinformatics workshop. There were dual goals for the workshop; first, there was an emphasis on further identifying and extending the geoinformatics community. The expertise needed for such a community to flourish ranges from domain experts in the Earth and space sciences, to computer science, library science, and information systems. To this end, the workshop had a strong focus on bringing together as diverse a group of attendees as possible. Of particular interest for participation were graduate students who would serve as the next generation of geoinformatists. The second goal of the workshop was to identify the infrastructural needs and common problems facing the geoinformatics community. We feel that the workshop was successful in achieving both of these goals, and the identified needs and problems are briefly outlined in subsequent sections. This special issue highlights selected presentations from the workshop, and the contributions of these papers are summarized in the following sections. .