'Eye on Earth' enables cloud-based environmental data sharing

By eGov Innovation Editors | Dec 4, 2011

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'Eye on Earth' network, an online community for developing innovative services that map environmental parameters was launched by the European Environment Agency (EEA), Esri and Microsoft Corp. 
 at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The new cloud computing-based network provides a collaborative online service for hosting, sharing and discovering data on the environment and promotes the principles of public data access and citizen science. It provides organizations with a security-enhanced central location for managing their geospatial environmental content using Esri's ArcGIS Online cloud services coupled with Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure.

"The launch of the Eye on Earth network is a great leap forward in helping organizations provide the public with authoritative data on the environment and in helping citizens around the world better understand some of the most pressing environmental challenges in their local area," said Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of EEA.

"With the input of environmental stakeholders globally, we're pleased to see the network expand and become a vital service for those interested in learning more about the environment. Environmental policy makers also have a new tool to understand and visualize environmental information to support good environmental policy making," she added.

Eye on Earth was first launched in 2008 as part of a public-private partnership between the EEA and Microsoft with the end goal of making environmental data available to all 600 million citizens across the EEA's 32 member and seven cooperating countries.

Three new services were made available — WaterWatch, AirWatch and NoiseWatch.

WaterWatch uses the EEA's environmental data to monitor and display water quality ratings across Europe's public swimming sites. AirWatch illustrates air quality ratings in Europe, while NoiseWatch combines the EEA's data with input from citizens.

Noise Meter, a new mobile application for noise level readings available on mobile operating systems Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.5, allows users to take noise level readings from their mobile devices and instantly upload them into NoiseWatch's database.

"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 visualizing the world's critical environmental data," said Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft.

"Eye on Earth allows for extensive collaboration among European agencies and communities," added Jack Dangermond, Esri president. "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 policymaking. In addition, this platform, developed for Europe, can be implemented in other countries and regions of the world."