GEON

INTEROP – GIN (the Geosciences Information Network)

A coalition of the state geological surveys (AASG), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), GEON, and other partners will receive about $625,000 over 3 years from NSF under the INTEROP solicitation to start building a distributed, interoperable data network. AASG and USGS estimate they collectively maintain over 3,000 data bases or data sets.  The GIN project will develop standardized services to make these data accessible online in a distributed network using a few standards and protocols, and work with data providers to implement these services.

The key components of this network are 1) catalog systems for data discovery; 2) service definitions that define interfaces for searching catalogs and accessing resources; 3) shared interchange formats to encode information for transmission (e.g. various XML markup languages); 4) data providers that publish information using standardized services defined by the network; and 5) client applications enabled to utilize information resources provided by the network. The GIN will integrate and utilize catalog resources that currently exist or are in development.

The Geosciences Information Network project will be managed by the Arizona Geological Survey on behalf of the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) in partnership with the USGS.  In addition to GEON(www.geongrid.org), the Earthchem (www.earthchem.org) network is an active partner.  Collaborators include GIS software company ESRI, and the OneGeology consortium of 80 nations that is building a global digital geologic map.