The goal of this session is to discuss the integration of existing community specific data infrastructures and data services into multidisciplinary services required by a wide range of users and stakeholders. We invite contributions from all scientific fields in the environmental domain, such as solid Earth, marine and atmospheric sciences, but also contributions addressing e-science and ICT issues, in order to share strategies and visions to tackle the organizational and technological challenges as well as the scientific missions. The session aims at emphasizing the importance of global data infrastructures and, for this reason, contributions from key international initiatives are welcome.
We encourage the presentation of plans and initiatives addressing the various elements of data and service integration, including metadata standards for interoperation, dedicated to creating integrated thematic and multidisciplinary services for users. Discussion on the relationship with large-scale e-infrastructures is also encouraged.
Particular attention is given to the efforts needed to provide access for stakeholders not belonging to the scientific community as well as to disseminating data products of relevance for the societal challenges like geo-hazards and geo-resources. We plan to promote a stimulating discussion and a debate on the challenge of creating federated data services within and across the communities.