Section 1.5: Geoinformatics

Head of Section: Prof. Dr. Doris Dransch

With rapid technological developments, a broad and constantly growing data pool is nowadays available in the geosciences to investigate System Earth. Available data comprises measurements gathered with powerful sensor networks or satellites as well as the results of increasingly detailed simulation models. Further, information available via internet based data portals and services become more and more important. Bringing together relevant data from different sources and analyzing massive heterogeneous and multidimensional data are big challenges. Geoinformatics makes an important contribution here.

Our goal is to extend the range of geoscientific methods with methods from computer science. We investigate new questions in geoinformatics that arise from the investigation of System Earth. Our focus is on geoinformation management and interactive geovisualization for data exploration. Our new concepts and methods are developed in close cooperation with domain experts to systematically support the geoscientific research and reasoning process.