Building an International Collaboration for GeoInformatics

Geoinformatics (cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences) is being developed as a linked system of sites that provide to the Earth science community a library of research data research-grade tools to manipulate, mine, analyze and model interdisciplinary data, and mechanisms to provide the necessary computational resources for these activities. Our science is global in scope and hence, geoinformatics (GI) must be an international effort. How do we build this international GI? What are the main challenges presented by the political, cultural, organizational, and technical diversity of the global science community that we need to address to achieve a truly global cyberinfrastructure for the Geosciences? GI needs to be developed in an internet-like fashion establishing connections among independent globally distributed sites (`nodes') that will share, link, and integrate their data holdings and services. Independence of the GI pieces with respect to goals, scope, and approaches is critical to sustain commitment from people to build a GI node for which they feel ownership and get credit. This should not be fought by funding agencies - and certainly not by state and federal agencies. Communication, coordination, and collaboration are the core efforts to build the connections, but incentives and resources are required to advance and support them. Part of the coordination effort is development and maintenance of standards. Who should set these standards and govern their modification? Do we need an official international body to do so, and should this be a "governing body" or an "advisory body"? What role should international commissions and bodies such as CODATA/ICSU or IUGS-CGI, international societies and unions, the national geological surveys and other federal agencies play? Guidance from the science community is key to construct a system that geo-researchers will want to use, and that meets their needs. Only when the community endorses GI as a fundamental platform to support science research will we be able to address the challenging question how to insure sustained funding of GI which will undoubtly be a costly effort, convincing governments and funding agencies to invest in a global effort. Perhaps the most challenging problems are cultural ones such as the "my data" issue, the reluctance to share data even if they were generated with public funding. This is slowly being resolved by some funding agencies through moratorium periods for use of data before they are available to everyone, but will require a sustained "education" effort of the geoscience research community. Geoinformatics is the platform for a new paradigm in how we conduct our research. The challenges to building an international GI are quite serious, some might say daunting, but the conveners of this session feel that the effort is not only worth it, but required for the sake of our science research.