HR: 15:25h
AN: IN43C-08    [Abstracts]
TI: International Coalition for GeoInformatics" (iGeoInfo): Its origins, purpose, and future direction
AU: * Lane, R
EM: hlane@nsf.gov
AF: National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230 United States
AB: The International Coalition for GeoInformatics" (iGeoInfo.org) was formed as an outgrowth of an inaugural workshop (attended by 35 scientists and 20 representatives of European, North American and Chinese funding organizations) held to launch a global forum on sedimentary geology and paleobiology at the 32nd International Geological Congress in Florence, Italy. A subsequent special session on geoinformatics was held at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna in April of 2005. iGeoInfo was founded to help build an international community that works together to promote data acquisition and sharing, to optimize IT concepts, to advance and advocate for geoinformatics in general, and to formulate a more coordinated approach to international funding agencies. What are the challenges confronting iGeoInfo and other internationally directed geoinformatics organizations? The main ones are the political, cultural, organizational, and technical diversity of the global science community that must be addressed to achieve a truly global cyberinfrastructure for the Geosciences. Thus, the international communities must work together for the development, management and deployment of these data and products. A key point is that no single group or institution can do all of this in terms of physical or intellectual capacity. Furthermore, this is by nature a real community effort - real in the sense that a very large proportion of the community will be actively involved. With everything in place, GeoInformatics through iGeoInfo can become an engine to help drive the next generation of science.
UR: http://www.igeoinfo.org
DE: 3675 Sedimentary petrology
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005