Background

The OneGeology concept originated in the UK in early 2006. With the potential stimulus of the UN International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) very much in mind, an idea was opportunistically presented a few weeks later to the General Assembly of the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW) in Paris. The challenge laid down was: could we use IYPE to begin the creation of an interoperable digital geological dataset of the planet? Fourteen months later, the concept was unanimously endorsed by the international geoscience community at a meeting in Brighton, UK, and goals were set to achieve a global launch at the 33rd IGC in Oslo in August 2008. The goals that the Brighton meeting agreed for OneGeology were deceptively simple. They were to:

• improve the accessibility of geological map data;

• exchange know-how and skills so that all nations could participate; and

• accelerate interoperability in the geosciences and the take up of a new “standard” (GeoSciML).

In Oslo 18 months later, the author, Simon Winchester, launched a fully operational project with 94 national participants, and 25 of those nations were already serving national map datasets through a state-of-the-art web map portal.

The current situation

Today there are 114 countries participating in OneGeology (Figure 20.1), more than 40 of which are serving data using a web map portal and protocols, registries, and technology to “harvest” and serve data from around the world (www.onegeology.org/).