Nasa and Cisco are partnering to develop a climate change
monitoring platform.
The online collaborative global monitoring platform, called the
"Planetary Skin", will
capture, collect, analyse and report data on environmental
conditions around the world.
Under the terms of a
Space
Act Agreement, Nasa and Cisco will work together to develop the
Planetary Skin as an online collaborative platform, to capture and
analyse data from satellite, airborne, sea- and land-based
sensors.
This data will be made available for the general public,
governments and businesses to measure, report and verify
environmental data in near-real-time, to help detect and adapt to
global climate change.
"In the past 50 years, Nasa's expertise has been applied to
solving humanity's challenges, including playing a part in
discovering global climate change," said S Pete Worden, director of
Nasa's Ames Research Center. "The Nasa-Cisco partnership brings
together two world-class organisations that are well equipped with
the technologies and skills to develop and prototype the Planetary
Skin infrastructure."
Cisco and Nasa will kick off Planetary Skin with a series of
pilot projects, including "Rainforest Skin," which will be
prototyped during the next year.
Rainforest Skin will focus on the deforestation of rainforests
around the world and explore how to integrate a comprehensive
sensor network.
It will also examine how to capture, analyse and present
information about the changes in the amount of carbon in
rainforests in a transparent and useable way. According to
scientists, the destruction of rainforests causes more carbon to be
added to the atmosphere and remain there. That contributes
significantly to global warming.
"Mitigating the impacts of climate change is critical to the
world's economic and social stability," said John Chambers, Cisco
chief executive. "This unique partnership taps the power and
innovation of the market and harnesses it for the public good.
"Cisco is proud to work with Nasa on this initiative and hopes
others from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors will
join us in this exciting endeavour."