Best-selling author Simon Winchester will emcee the launch of OneGeology at the opening of the International Geological Congress next Wed. in Oslo, Norway. BBC News interviewed Ian Jackson from the British Geological Survey about the societal impacts of having an interactive, online digital geological map of the world.
OneGeology is a partner in the Geoscience Information Network (GIN) that AZGS is building on behalf of the 51 U.S. state geological surveys and the USGS. I've been asked to join the board for the OneGeology initiative that is constructing a comparable spatial data network among 27 European nations.
Steve Richard, head of the AZGS Geoinformatics program, is hunkered down with an IUGS Working Group to launch demos during the IGC meeting, using the new Geoscience Mark-up Language (GeoSciML). Geological surveys in Sweden, Canada, and France each have Web service applications that allow users to pull digital geologic maps from their Web sites in real time and carry out a variety of tasks with them.