Findings and Recommendations - Basic Research Opportunities in Earth Science - page 108

establishment of core programs in Earth and planetary materials and geobiology
will make EAR a more effective federal partner in both the nanotechnology and
biocomplexity initiatives, respectively.
Although the programmatic mechanisms are perhaps less straightforward, it
is clear to the committee that the participation of Earth scientists in federal
information technology programs has to be improved. For example, although a
series of proposals involving EAR-based scientists has been submitted to the
Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) program, their success rate in the
two competitions was zero. 34 This is peculiar given that the three principal foci
of the KDI program—knowledge networking, learning and intelligent systems,
and new computational challenges—are clearly applicable to a wide range of
Earth science problems. These failures suggest that EAR should be more
aggressive in fostering substantial collaborations between Earth scientists and the
information technology research community.
In some cases, the disciplinary strength and community organization within
EAR are already sufficient to engage other NSF divisions, and the need is
primarily for NSF managers to provide a structure for interdivisional
collaborations. One obvious opportunity is the cooperation between EAR and
OCE needed to manage the offshore components of the EarthScope initiative.
EarthScope will also provide an expanded basis for interaction between EAR and
the MARGINS program. In addition, there are excellent opportunities for
strengthening links between EAR and the Division of Civil and Mechanical
Systems (CMS) in NSF's Directorate for Engineering. The CMS division
supports “research that will increase geotechnical knowledge for foundations,
slopes, excavations, and other geostructures, including soil and rock
improvement technologies and reinforcement systems; constitutive modeling and
verification in geomechanics; remediation and containment of geoenvironmental
contamination; transferability of laboratory results to field scale; and
nondestructive and in situ evaluation.” 35 Many of these topics are relevant to the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program and the Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation, which provides a basis for cooperation
between EAR, CMS, and other government agencies.
34 For a listing of KDI proposals that have received awards to date, see http://
www.ehr.nsf.gov/kdi/default.htm .
35 From the programmatic description at http://www.eng.nsf.gov/CMS/CGS/cgs.htm .