New collaboration tool allows for seamless integration of water data from around the world.
By Aubrey Ann Parker
Circle of Blue
With all the power of 21st century collaboration technology, nothing to date has tamed the massive amounts of disparate water information locked away in diverse database systems. But that may have changed last week when Google Labs launched Fusion Tables, a powerful new online research and data organizing tool that makes it much easier to share and navigate the world’s digital science and technical archives.
Fusion Tables, which was developed by Google engineers using sample research data about the global fresh water crisis provided by the Pacific Institute and Circle of Blue, is specifically designed to unlock a treasure trove of facts, trends, and scientific findings that until now have been sequestered in databases and spreadsheets not easily shared.
The new Google technology provides users a rare opportunity to share critical data, probe them, organize pertinent information and generate design elements — charts and graphs — that translate complex information into much more digestible trends. The intent is to enable online collaborators to study and understand in new dimensions the world’s complex problems — the fresh water crisis among them — discern the salient details and organize those scientifically confirmed facts. They can be used to tell stories, offer insights, and propose solutions that heretofore were largely the purview of scholars and scientific experts.
Google Fusion Tables tutorial with Circle of Blue’s Aubrey Ann Parker
Video © Aaron Jaffe/Circle of Blue
Read complete article — originally published on June 16, 2009 — at Circle of Blue. All video by Aaron Jaffe for Circle of Blue. Nadya Ivanova, Cody T. Pope, and Keith Schneider contributed to this article.
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