A geoscience data evaluation and information system

The exploration of mineral, energy, and water resources requires increasingly access to and usage of relevant up-to-date scientific technical, and economic information on relevant literature and factual data. At present, an Information Center on Mineral Resources and Geosciences is being established in the Federal Republic of Germany. The geoscience information center is responsible for the coordination of acquisition, storage, and dissemination of data on mineral and energy resources, water resources, and economic geology to inform public administration, relevant industry, research institutions, and universities by means of access to a variety of data bases. In the final stage, the information will be accessible on-line through a computer center at Karlsruhe (INKA).Available for the user are national data bases, comprising literature, and factual data on geoscience, mining, deposits, hydrogeology, ocean research, and marine technology, hydrology, oceanography, geodesy, and meteorology, as well as access to international literature and factual data bases. The relational retrieval system GRIPS-DIRS is in use for handling literature data bases at Karlsruhe (INKA),and the hierarchical storage and retrieval system ADABAS for handling factual data bases. The establishment of data-about-data-systems and the dissemination of publicly available evluated data in form of graphical displays of maps is envisaged. The geoscience information center cooperates intensely with similar centers of other disciplines in the Federal Republic of Germany.