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 other agencies, there are very similar goals and activities, issues and challenges in geoscience information. The rapid development of technology and especially web services, the massive explosion of data, the increasingly diverse requirements of users across all sectors – governments, scientists, commerce and the public all introduce 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. While geoscience informatics has many good examples, which exploit developments in information technology to further global cooperation, we still have a long way to go in sharing information, experience and expertise efficiently, so we can analyse and synthesize data and knowledge across political and continental boundaries with the minimum of barriers, work in international teams on research projects and add value.

There are some excellent examples of collaboration already, i.e. initiatives as GEOSS, GMES, INSPIRE, GeoSciML, cooperation between governmental 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), specific projects such as OneGeology and eWater. Several of these initiatives and groups have made good progress and the challenges above are very much part of their discussions and agendas. But a significant question remains about how effective current collaboration really is and whether given the enormity of the challenges listed in the first paragraph we can do better. This presentation will use the approach of a “SWOT” analysis to examine that question and within that analysis look more closely at two specific examples - IUGS-CGI and its development of GeoSciML and the European Directive INSPIRE.

The Strengths of the actors in this domain include: our rich and diverse expertise; different view-points; extensive datasets; state of art computing applications and access to high performance computing. There are existing projects, networks and collaborations that provide a foundation for future integration. The Opportunities are considerable – information/informatics is what joins sciences and there has never been a more opportune need for multidisciplinary science. The wish to bring together and integrate data means that there are opportunities for development of standards for interoperability and harmonisation. Some of these strengths and the opportunities will be illustrated by reviewing the work on GeoSciML and INSPIRE. The former is being taken forward by IUGS-CGI through its active working group on interoperability. INSPIRE is an example of the growth of spatial data infrastructures and it 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.

But we must acknowledge Weaknesses, too. There are many different actors and because of this, it is difficult to know just who is working in our domain and what they are doing. Can we identify and map them? The different cultures and view-points of these actors and their different goals often lead to re-invention of wheels, duplication of effort and, ultimately, defence of territory. A subsidiary question must be asked as well: does the academic reward system, with its emphasis on individual merit and esteem through papers and citation indices, actually discourage collaboration? Finally the geoscience information domain has many different actors, but there is little or no clear collective vision or clear leadership for all these actors to unite behind. Can we, indeed do we want to, change that what is now, essentially, a liberal system? Perhaps the most significant Threat is of inertia – we do nothing and all the weaknesses persist and we make much less than we should of the potential opportunities and our branch of science remains marginal. Some may also see it as a threat that unless we take a lead commercial companies and the market will move on and ignore us and our work.

So what do we need to do to make the collaboration more effective (what are our opportunities)? We can begin by addressing our weaknesses and exploiting our strengths. One of these weaknesses and perhaps the one that needs tacking first is to simply understand who is doing what in our domain. There are amazingly numerous 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. Second, can we embrace more enthusiastically the work on SDIs, work ignored in some scientific quarters because it is lead by “geographers”. Third, can the major scientific Unions take a stronger lead and perhaps also the global projects like GEOSS and the regional political bodies like the European Commission. Many feel 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.

However, possibly our greatest opportunity of improving the situation lies in our own hands. That means that we in geoscience information and informatics should proactively look to develop collaboration that transcends the different sectors of our own domain (academia, geological surveys and agencies), use our transferable technology and techniques to extend beyond that into the different sciences and last but not least work across political boundaries.