In a world facing increased concern about climate risks, it's essential that policymakers and the public have access to environmental information, says Microsoft. The company unveiled its Eye on Earth network last week, at the COP17 climate change conference, being held in Durban.
Eye on Earth is an online community open to anyone with environmental data, from weather bureaus to individuals, and is designed to help develop services that map environmental parameters. Developed in collaboration with the European Environmental Agency (EEA) and Esri's ArcGIS service, Eye on Earth serves as a cloud-based, global network for storing and sharing environmental data. It's also aimed at promoting public data access and citizen science, according to Microsoft.
The service collects data from the EEA's 32 member countries and seven co-operating states and makes this available geospatially using Bing Maps, through a set of 'Watches'. Eye on Earth was first introduced in 2008 as part of a public-private partnership between the EEA and Microsoft, with the goal of making environmental data available to all 600 million citizens.
The two earlier services include WaterWatch, which tracks and monitors water quality ratings across Europe's swimming spots, and AirWatch, which monitors air quality data across member countries.
New to the network is the NoiseWatch service, which allows citizens to measure and report noise levels in 164 European cities. There's also a complementary mobile app, called Noise Meter, available on Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.5, which allows users to take readings from their mobile devices and instantly upload them to the NoiseWatch database.
Eye on Earth allows users to create and share maps within their organisation, or make the content publicly available as Web-accessible services, explains Microsoft. With WaterWatch, users can zoom in on a given section of coastline, riverbank or lake, with a 'traffic-light' indication (red, yellow, green) of bathing water quality, using official data alongside ratings of people who have visited the location. AirWatch tracks air purity across Europe via 1 000 monitoring stations.
“With the launch of the new Eye on Earth network, citizens, governments and scientists now have an easy-to-use, scalable platform for collecting, sharing and visualising the world's critical environmental data,” said Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft.
“The impact of projects such as Eye on Earth shows the potential that new types of partnerships and technology can yield.”
Esri president Jack Dangermond added that the online network could help facilitate extensive collaboration among European agencies and communities. “This platform, based on ArcGIS Online, is putting environmental information into the hands of many. It equips people with tools and information to engage in conversation, analysis, reporting and policy-making. In addition, this platform, developed for Europe, can be implemented in other countries and regions of the world.”
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