Astroinformatics: A 21st Century Approach to Astronomy

Understand

Data volumes from multiple sky surveys have grown from gigabytes into terabytes during the past decade, and will grow from terabytes into tens (or hundreds) of petabytes in the next decade.

• This exponential growth of new data both enables and challenges effective astronomical research, requiring new approaches.
• Thus far, astronomy has tended to address these challenges in an informal and ad hoc manner, with the necessary special expertise being assigned to e-Science or survey science.
• However, we see an even wider scope and therefore promote a broader vision of this data-driven revolution in astronomical research.