Groupware for Research on Subsurface CO $$_2$$ 2 Storage

Directed towards the multidisciplinary research field on carbon capture and storage (CCS), this paper reports empirically on progress towards a groupware system (collaborative software) and experiences learned when creating groupware for CCS research. As subsurface CO $$_2$$ 2 storage requires collaboration across a wide range of CCS disciplines, we describe the collaborative challenges faced and how our proposed groupware addresses these, and present criteria for CCS groupware and a field study over three iterations evaluating how well various software systems fulfill those criteria. In iteration one, we evaluate a commercial and feature-rich stand-alone application used together with a conferencing application. Based on this evaluation, in iteration two we develop and evaluate a custom-built lightweight web application. In the third and last iteration, we present a prototype that uses the most useful features from the two evaluated solutions. Finally, we give a suggestion of how to implement a groupware fulfilling all requirements identified for a successful CCS groupware.