The ABC of Ecoinformatics - Knowledge representation, Agents, Services, and Programming Languages for Environmental Modelling and Decision Support

Ecology, environmental engineering and natural resource management comprise complex and challenging domain for demonstrating Computer Science algorithms and IT tools. Environment is a broad, interdisciplinary field, and both natural process modelling and decision support for environmental management require a significant investment from software engineers to understand the domain, while raise new research challenges. Environmental applications are not only data-intense and complex, but also inherit from natural systems problems of uncertainty and scaling, which altogether comprise the key challenges of ecoinformatics research. This introduction provides a gentle introduction to ecoinformatics, i.e. the science of information in ecology and environmental sciences, by presenting key concepts and research challenges. We investigate complex environmental applications of computer science and the enabling role of computer science for investigating nature. Technology focuses on knowledge representation, multi-agent systems, service-oriented software engineering and domain-specific programming languages; and is accompanied with applied research results in several domains, including agriculture, water management, air quality, ecosystem services, and meteorology.