Generalized SETI in a virtual observatory

The advent of new large digital (multi-terabyte) sky surveys and archives, and the data-mining tools for their exploration will provide new opportunities for SETI. A major class of studies using federated, multi-wavelength digital sky archives will involve systematic searches for sources with unusual or anomalous properties, in terms of their spectrum, variability, etc. The concept of SETI can be generalized as a search for such outliers in the parameter spaces of observable source properties. SETI would thus be just one of the many related applications in a national (or global) virtual observatory.