The Architecture of the Georgia Basin Digital Library: Using geoscientific knowledge in sustainable development

Abstract

To address societal issues such as sustainable development, geoscience knowledge must be transformed from its conventional packaging. A holistic approach to this transformation requires that (1) geo-information be used to develop indicators such as mineral potential, material availability, groundwater capacity, etc., and that (2) the indicators are combined with socio-economic factors to guide generation of future scenarios for land use, population, urban growth, etc. In this paper we discuss the architecture of a prototype system designed to support these two activities. The system consists of a geoscientific data and knowledge repository that is loosely linked with a future scenario modeling tool (Quest™). The repository supplies transformed information to the tool, and also provides explanations for the input variables and output results. An example implementation, Georgia Basin Digital Library, is also presented.