Grand challenges in environmental informatics

We live in an era of environmental deterioration through depletion and degradation of resources such as air, water, and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife (Kondratyev, 1998; Kondratyev et al., 2004; Cracknell et al., 2009; Hansen et al., 2013; Freedman, 2014). As a matter of fact, environmental degradation is one of three main threats identified in 2004 by the High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations, the other two being poverty and infectious diseases. In particular, air pollution ranked seventh on the worldwide list of risk factors, contributing to approximately three million deaths each year. Air pollution is especially considerable in growing and emerging economies (Ramanathan and Feng, 2009; Rao et al., 2013) (see, for instance, Figure 1). Therefore, environmental studies are of great importance and they stand at the forefront of modern science (http:// www.ipcc.ch/). Environmental research is a multi-disciplinary science because