HR: 13:40h
AN: NG12B-01 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Earth Sciences, GeoInformatics and Visualization and Analysis of Distributed Databases
AU: * Snyder, W S
EM: wsnyder@nsf.gov
AF: Division of Earth Sciences National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd, Rm 785, Arlington, VA 22230 United States
AB: GeoInformatics is part of NSF's larger cyberinfrastructure initiative that broadly targets the earth sciences. GeoInformatics as a system encompasses the development and maintenance of databases, but it must also provide the mechanisms to mine, synthesize, and visualize these data in new ways, and to seamlessly use old and new numerical and statistical tools on here-to-fore inaccessible data sets. It includes high-level as well as desk-top modeling. The entire system must be accessible to the entire community - from the large research universities to the smallest college. Finally, it must provide real opportunities for wide participation - a few cannot do this for the many - it must be a community system. The overall system will include legacy as well as new data. Vast amounts of data will stream in from sensors, in particular as we establish more natural observatories. Data mining and other methodologies have to be developed and refined to allow researchers to easily, rapidly, and accurately access these data. Visualization, numerical, and statistical tools boxes have to be developed that allow the users to easily but exhaustively assess and synthesize these data as they ask a myriad of questions. Many of these questions will be new - the system will allow the researcher to ask questions they have never before thought about - that is the key for the future of our science. These tools have to be maintained and updated, and new ones developed as users ask questions in different ways, as the databases expand, and as information technology advances. Some of the computational modeling efforts will be very intensive and require significant resources; the role of the system is to connect the models with the data that they must ultimately be tested with, to insure that the models are available to the entire community, and insure that the codes are updated as necessary and archived. Thus the GeoInformatics system, indeed, the cyberinfrastructure system as a whole, starts with the mundane process of data acquisition and database construction and ends with the tools and models that will help define the next generation of science.
DE: 6699 General or miscellaneous
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
SC: Nonlinear Geophysics [NG]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting