KEYNOTE: GLOBALISATION OF GEOSCIENCE INFORMATION: DEVELOPING COLLABORATION TO SUSTAIN GROWTH

It is very apparent that around the world, in universities and in geological surveys and agencies, that there are very similar goals and activities, issues and challenges in geoscience information. The rapid development of technology and especially the web, the massive explosion of data, the increasingly diverse requirements of users across all sectors – governments, scientists, commerce and the public all give us new demands and challenges. Add to this the global and trans-national issues where geoscience has a critical role to play – such as sustainable energy resources, mineral resources, agriculture, groundwater, transport, catastrophic natural hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis and last but not least climate change, it becomes obvious that there is a pressing need for us to work together to sustain growth. In Geoscience informatics this equals to give, share and receive information efficiently, to analyse and synthesize across political and continental boundaries, to work in international teams on research projects and to add value and to progress though that pool of information (and brains!)

We appear to have some excellent examples of collaboration already, i.e. initiatives as GEOSS, GMES, INSPIRE, GeoSCIML, governmental (e.g. the GIC) and Non-governmental organisations (e.g. the global Geoscience Unions, and other global geoscience bodies,e.g. the Commission of the Geological Map of the World, CGMW), projects such as OneGeology and E-water. Several of these initiatives and groups have made good progress and the challenges above are very much part of their discussions and agendas. Let us look at two examples with which I am familiar - the INSPIRE Directive and the work of IUGS-CGI and its development of GeoSciML INSPIRE will, ultimately create a spatial data infrastructure for environmental data across Europe – for data discovery, data and network specifications: a very practical move towards sharing – both data and systems. IUGS-CGI through its active working group on interoperability is making excellent progress on interoperability through its work on a global Geoscience Mark-Up language: GeoSciML. In addition IUGS-CGI is also trying, through their outreach programme, to share informatics know-how with the developing world through workshops in Mozambique and in the near future, Namibia.

What do we need to do to make the collaboration more effective? Perhaps the biggest of our particular challenges is to simply understand who is doing what. There are many, many groups and initiatives in the area of geoscience information/geoinformatics and with each meeting like this we seem discover more new initiatives, groups and individuals who are working in the same fields and on the same problems. INSPIRE regulations, at least in Europe, is helping with the “interoperability“ of these groups, but force of law cannot be the only way we tackle this problem. We need to look to the major scientific Unions to take a lead here and also the global projects like GEOSS and the regional political bodies like the European Commission. There is a need for these organisations to give geoscience informatics a much higher priority and profile than they have to date. Without the lead of these groups and bodies and also their funding to provide the “mutual” discovery and “glue money” then we will make much less progress than we deem is necessary, and society expects of us.

So geoscience organisations need to be more aware of their responsibilities, take on what is needed to work, tackle the challenges with the best (international) teams and without duplicating effort and use the scarce skill resources efficiently – i.e. we, the geoscientists forming these organisations, must face our problems and collaborate together less competitively and more cooperatively to sustain growth for the future.