Association of American State Geologists
Digital data from all 50 states
The Motivation: State Geological Surveys in the U.S., in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, have thousands of databases, directories, and 85,000+ geologic maps that collectively constitute a national geoscience data “backbone” for research and practical applications. Much of this data is at-risk in its current format (paper records, samples, etc.) or difficult to access.
The Solution: Digitize at-risk, legacy, geothermal-relevant data and combine it with existing digital data to create a publicly accessible system.
The Goal: The National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) will make large quantities of geothermal-relevant geoscience data available to the public by creating a national, sustainable, distributed, and interoperable network of data providers. The state geological surveys will develop, collect, serve, and maintain geothermal relevant data as an integral component of NGDS.
How it Works: Each participating state data provider will act as a logical node in the national distributed data network. The provider will serve their data online (either hosted in-house or through hosting by other consortium servers) and will act as a catalyzing agent for accessing other data sources in their respective states.
Key components of the network include:
- Catalog systems for data discovery;
- Service specifications that define interfaces for searching catalogs and accessing resources;
- Shared interchange formats to encode information for transmission (i.e., various XML markup languages);
- Data providers that publish information using standardized services defined by the network; and
- Client applications enabled to utilize information resources provided by the network.
By working collaboratively with our partners and affiliates, the State Geothermal Data project is a small but significant step forward in the future production of domestic geothermal energy. The standardized sets of geothermal resource data will be available to the public and serve to focus geothermal exploration activities, thereby mitigating investment risks.
www.stategeothermaldata.org