Developing a geoscience knowledge framework for a national geological survey organisation

Geological survey organisations (GSOs) are established by most nations to provide a geoscience knowledge base for effective decision-making on mitigating the impacts of natural hazards and global change, and on sustainable management of natural resources. The value of the knowledge base as a national asset is continually enhanced by exchange of knowledge between GSOs as data and information providers and the stakeholder community as knowledge ‘users and exploiters’. Geological maps and associated narrative texts typically form the core of national geoscience knowledge bases, but have some inherent limitations as methods of capturing and articulating knowledge. Much knowledge about the 3D spatial interpretation and its derivation and uncertainty, and the wider contextual value of the knowledge, remains intangible in the minds of the mapping geologist in implicit and tacit form. To realise the value of these knowledge assets, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has established a workflow-based cyber-infrastructure to enhance its knowledge management and exchange capability. Future geoscience surveys in the BGS will contribute to a national, 3D digital knowledge base on UK geology, with the associated implicit and tacit information captured as metadata, qualitative assessments of uncertainty, and documented workflows and best practice. Knowledge-based decision-making at all levels of society requires both the accessibility and reliability of knowledge to be enhanced in the grid-based world. Establishment of collaborative cyber-infrastructures and ontologies for geoscience knowledge management and exchange will ensure that GSOs, as knowledge-based organisations, can make their contribution to this wider goal.