SCIENCE

"These videos will be important for scientists and engineers for the next 20 years," Wereley said. "This site will be a clearinghouse for researchers to find videos and other materials to help us all understand what is happening and what has happened in the course of this disaster."

This image from a video not previously released to the public is from April 23, three days after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The video is one of thousands of hours of underwater videos available at www.OilSpillHub.org, a new website developed by Purdue University. (Purdue University image)

The oil spill hub will be built using science gateway technology HubZero, which was developed at Purdue University. Gerry McCartney, chief information officer, vice president for information technology and Purdue's Olga England Oesterle Professor of Information Technology, says the oil spill hub fits in with the mission of developing online gathering places for scientists to share research findings and resources.

"So far the HubZero consortium, which is based at Purdue, has developed more than 20 of these hubs, with more coming online regularly," McCartney said. "There are hubs that focus on pharmaceuticals, nano-electronics, earthquakes, cancer research, advanced manufacturing and many other topics."

A list of topics addressed by the hubs can be found at http://hubzero.org/sites

The video site for OilSpillHub.org was developed by Purdue's informatics team, which develops online tools to support learning and scientific discovery, including the nationally acclaimed classroom technologies HotSeat and Mixable.