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The EPA has issued a challenge to the world: as of yesterday, the clock is ticking on an attempt to gather as much information, collaboratively, as possible about sustaining the Puget Sound. This is, therefore, a project that is both Web 2.0 and green. That's enough to get my attention. Here's a quote from an email sent by Molly O'Neill, the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information, to the participants in the OEI Environmental Information Symposium (of which CSC is a member):

What is the Puget Sound Information Challenge ?

Part of this year's Environmental Information Symposium, the Challenge is EPA's first data-driven mass collaboration designed to bring together environmental information on an important environmental issue. There are two goals for the participants of this two-day challenge. The first is to leverage available resources to bring together and deliver environmental information that will be useful to the Puget Sound Partnership. The second goal is to "learn by doing." We hope that, through this case study ,we can gain a new perspective on what is working well, and the issues and obstacles that impede ability to share information internally and with our partners. I want to use these findings to inform our ongoing work on information access at EPA.

For more information, please see the Challenge wiki at: http://pugetsound.epageo.org .

This is pretty cool. It seems like somebody has already thought of one of the obvious Web 2.0 ideas -- a mashup with a Google map of the data -- here it's a map of georeferenced articles. I suppose another map idea might be a mashup that focused on critical locations - areas of pollution, key habitats, etc. Maybe if that, in turn, was also mashed up with locations of current and future projects, you might be able to see, at a glance, whether there were areas not being addressed and what they might be.

Anyway. Cool challenge.