Geoinformatics will become a system that integrates spatial data, geographic information systems (GIS), relational databases and queries, 3-D (and 4-D) visualization techniques, digital mapping, digital imagery, and data mining.

Geoinformatics is a fledgling effort, yet significant efforts are underway around the world that could make it as powerful and important to the geosciences as bioinformatics has become to the pharmaceutical and bioengineering communities. The societal demands that will drive the development of geoinformatics are resource exploitation, environmental preservation and restoration, water needs, and geologic hazards response and mitigation.

The first phase in establishing a geoinformatics system is digitizing geoscience databases. This has been underway for more than a decade, but vast amounts of information are yet to be touched.

The second phase is to create a fast, flexible, user-friendly capability to locate, access, evaluate, and integrate large amounts of related data. This can be described as the transformation of databases into "information bases." Fewer examples of this are operating publicly, such as the Kansas Geological Survey's Digital Petroleum Atlas (www.kgs.ukans.edu/DPA/).

The third phase is in development now, which will allow users to seek solutions to problems from a diversity of digital data sources and formats using on-line tutorials and analytical software. Connections will be more than simple hyperlinks to another fixed data point or site. New, derivative information will be generated through dynamic interaction with a distributed system of geo-libraries. This is the transformation of information bases into "knowledge bases."