Last year, the National Science Foundation kicked off a project called EarthCube, pooling the work of data scientists and cyber scientists to make a comprehensive, holistic pool of earth, air and water data – easy to access and update – allowing the geoscience community to address the most challenging research questions about understanding and predicting the earth system. EarthCube has serious potential to transform how the Earth science research is conducted, and how it is taught in schools and universities.
Knowinnovation is stewarding the project by facilitating its major meetings, which involve over 200 people from the geo-science community, about a hundred of them present at the meeting venue, and the rest connected virtually. At the first event, which took place in November of 2011, KI worked closely with the NSF to chart the course for the 4-day event. When we met with them to plan for the second workshop last June, the NSF emphasized that they didn’t want to be in charge, that EarthCube – both the project and the meeting – should be community driven. Keep reading »
