Environmental informatics
Encyclopedia
Environmental informatics is the science of information applied to environmental science
Environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...

. As such, it provides the information processing
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...

 and communication infrastructure to the interdisciplinary field of environmental sciences aiming at data, information and knowledge integration
Knowledge integration
Knowledge integration is the process of synthesizing multiple knowledge models into a common model .Compared to information integration, which involves merging information having different schemas and representation models, knowledge integration focuses more on synthesizing the understanding of a...

, the application of computational intelligence
Computational intelligence
Computational intelligence is a set of Nature-inspired computational methodologies and approaches to address complex problems of the real world applications to which traditional methodologies and approaches are ineffective or infeasible. It primarily includes Fuzzy logic systems, Neural Networks...

 to environmental data
Environmental data
Environmental data is that which is based on the measurement of environmental pressures, the state of the environment and the impacts on ecosystems...

 as well as the identification of environmental impacts
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...

 of information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

. The UK Natural Environment Research Council
Natural Environment Research Council
The Natural Environment Research Council is a British research council that supports research, training and knowledge transfer activities in the environmental sciences.-History:...

 defines environmental informatics as the "research and system development focusing on the environmental sciences relating to the creation, collection, storage, processing, modelling, interpretation, display and dissemination of data and information".

Environmental informatics emerged in early 1990 in Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

.

Current initiatives to effectively manage, share, and reuse environmental and ecological data are indicative of the increasing importance of fields like environmental informatics and Ecoinformatics
Ecoinformatics
Ecoinformatics, or ecological informatics, is the science of information in Ecology and Environmental science. It integrates environmental and information sciences to define entities and natural processes with language common to both humans and computers...

 to develop the foundations for effectively managing ecological information. Examples of these initiatives are National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

 Datanet
Datanet
This article is about the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure . For the ISP, Datanet please visit Datanet .On September 28, 2007, the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure announced a request for proposals with the name Sustainable Digital Data...

 projects, DataONE
DataONE
Data Observation Network for Earth is a project supported by the National Science Foundation under the DataNet program. DataONE will provide scientific data archiving for ecological and environmental data produced by scientists worldwide. DataONE's stated goal is to preserve and provide access to...

and Data Conservancy.

External links


The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK