Scientific geodata infrastructures: challenges, approaches and directions

Abstract

Based on various experiences in developing Geodata Infrastructures (GDIs) for scientific applications, this article proposes the concept of a Scientific GDI that can be used by scientists in environmental and earth sciences to share and disseminate their research results and related analysis methods. Scientific GDI is understood as an approach to tackle the science case in Digital Earth and to further enhance e-science for environmental research. Creating Scientific GDI to support the research community in efficiently exchanging data and methods related to the various scientific disciplines forming the basis of environmental studies poses numerous challenges on today's GDI developments. The paper summarizes requirements and recommendations on the publication of scientific geospatial data and on functionalities to be provided in Scientific GDI. Best practices and open issues for governance and policies of a Scientific GDI are discussed and are concluded by deriving a research agenda for the next decade.

Dating the Anthropocene: Towards an empirical global history of human transformation of the terrestrial biosphere

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A Tutorial on Geographic Information Systems: A ten-year update

“…At a basic level, UAVs and the high-resolution aerial imagery they can gather are used to survey which structures (e.g., public buildings, hospitals, schools) may be available for shelter after a disaster. They are also used to monitor the distribution of goods, identify temporary settlements, and help to provide estimates of displaced persons and assessments of damage and search-and-rescue activities c) Infrastructure development (Bernard, Mäs, Müller, Henzen, & Brauner, 2013;Guo, Qingyun, Zhang, & Xu, 2008;Schall et al, 2009;Yang, Raskin, Goodchild, & Gahegan, 2010). LIDAR data's accuracy, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness support a wide variety of infrastructure development and management needs.…”

Innovation in geoprocessing for a Digital Earth

“…Behind the scenes, approaches to support efficient and reliable online geoprocessing that alleviate the tension between the access to multiple and disparate spatial data sources and that support the coherent exploration of these data sources for knowledge discovery are more necessary than ever. Progress on online geoprocessing approaches is thus absolutely necessary, almost imperative, to turn Digital Earth's vision and objectives into tangible, usable 'tools' that for instance allow research teams to perform multi-disciplinary research or ease the ad hoc and timely generation of tailored information for citizens and in sum ensure the advancement of our body of knowledge (Bernard et al 2014). This special issue provides a state-of-the-art overview on recent developments and real-world applications of online geoprocessing in the view of the given objectives.…”