Many disciplines face the challenges of searching, retrieving, and effectively using complex data. Our ability to collect data, by varying methods, in many ways exceeds our ability to manage and understand it. However, the challenges we face are not all technical. Solutions exist at the confluence of technical, social and implementation aspects. To this end, many fields have turned to the emerging concept of informatics.

Informatics is often regarded as the science of information. The popular Wikipedia site describes how it relates to the fields of information systems and applied computer science. “Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information.” Based on this premise a number of informatics domains have emerged such as healthcare informatics and business informatics.

A newly emerging application area for informatics research is within the Earth and space sciences – sometimes referred to as geoinformatics. The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a conglomerate of 50,000 Earth and space science researchers, has developed a focus group “concerned with issues of data management and analysis, large-scale computational experimentation and modeling, and hardware and software infrastructure needs, which ultimately provide the capability to change data systems into knowledge systems that support the range of Earth and space science interests.”

An important component of this focus group is the students who will serve as the next generation implementers and problem solvers. The Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) focus group, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Department of Information Systems, would like to invite students and established researchers to a three‐day workshop. We aim for a discussion of current research topics with an emphasis on future needs and challenges. The workshop is open to everyone; however, we strongly encourage graduate student participation and involvement. We seek contributions of Earth and space science information systems and informatics applications. In addition, we seek research from other disciplines that could potentially be applicable to geoinformatics.

Informatics consists of a number of aspects and topical areas. In order to focus discussion we highlight three areas from which we solicit submissions. These areas have emerged from previous AGU meetings as prominent research topics.

Data Integration and Federated Information Systems

This area focuses on the challenges involved in data integration and interoperability of disparate and distributed data. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Lessons learned from other informatics fields – e.g. healthcare informatics and bioinformatics
• Metadata standards and management
• Designing, building, and deploying federated information systems
• Designing and building search/browse systems
• Technical and social issues involved in interoperability efforts
• Accessing and using multiple types and formats of data
• Data provenance