The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the establishment of the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) in May 2009. Our consortium received the first batch of funding for the NGDS the following September. The NGDS is a distributed network of databases that are collectively building a system for acquisition, management and maintenance of geothermal and related data. Access to these distributed data will be provided through a desktop application (Geothermal Desktop) as well as via the web sites of member databases. Users of the system will include federal and state agencies, researchers, decision makers, the general public, educational institutions, the geothermal industry, and financial institutions. The NGDS will be designed by using and adapting existing technology as well as emerging informatics standards and protocols. Ultimately, the NGDS will be able to handle the full range of geoscience and engineering data pertinent to geothermal resources and will incorporate data from the full suite of geothermal resource types. It will be able to handle data on geothermal site attributes, power plants, environmental factors, policy and procedure data, and institutional barriers (e.g., transmission infrastructure access, risk mitigation). It will provide resource classification and risk assessment tools to help encourage the development of more geothermal resources. It will be an easy to use system that meets the needs of both professionals and the public for information on geothermal resources.
Major participants in the NGDS to date are: GeoStrat Digital Information System (Boise State University); Energy & Geosciences Institute (University of Utah); Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy (University of Nevada, Reno); Geo-Heat Center (Oregon Institute of Technology); Stanford Geothermal Program (Stanford University); and U.S. Geoscience Information Network (Association of American State Geologists and US Geological Survey data system, Arizona Geological Survey). The U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, and Geothermal Energy Association will contribute to building the system as will a number of community task forces that target specific issues. Two other key geoinformatics systems, CoreWall (www.corewall.org ) and Geoinformatics for Geochemistry (GfG; www.geoinfogeochem.org ) will be working with the NGDS team to share technology, tools and participate in standards development and adoption.
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