Environmental informatics is the science of information applied to
environmental science. As such, it provides the
information processing and communication infrastructure to the interdisciplinary field of environmental sciences aiming at data, information and
knowledge integration, the application of
computational intelligence to
environmental data as well as the identification of
environmental impacts of
information technology. The UK
Natural Environment Research Council defines environmental informatics as the "research and system development focusing on the environmental sciences relating to the creation, collection, storage, processing, modelling, interpretation, display and dissemination of data and information".
Environmental informatics emerged in early 1990 in
Central Europe.
Current initiatives to effectively manage, share, and reuse environmental and ecological data are indicative of the increasing importance of fields like environmental informatics and
Ecoinformatics to develop the foundations for effectively managing ecological information. Examples of these initiatives are
National Science Foundation Datanet projects,
DataONE and Data Conservancy.