by Jbs122209 h3 — December 28, 2009—The Planetary Skin Institute (PSI) was launched during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark December 15, representing a breakthrough research-and-development approach to global monitoring of environmental conditions and changes.
The new institute, which draws on several years of a public/private partnership between Cisco Inc. and NASA to co-develop the Planetary Skin platform, was formed to carry out near-to-real-time global monitoring of environmental conditions and changes. The multimillion dollar initiative reportedly embodies an unprecedented level of collaboration between the public, private, NGO and academic sectors to meet the major environmental challenges facing the world.
PSI will collect data from space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks and will model, predict, analyze and report in standardized formats over an open, adaptable, networked platform. Organizers say it will be governed as a global public-good and it will eventually be accessible across the world for many millions of people to use so that they can collaborate and develop new approaches, solutions and models together that will help adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
The PSI global network will be made up of seven peer regional hub & spoke networks (Brazil, India, China, Africa, Japan, EU and the US) interconnected in a seamless collaborative network through a shared applied research and development agenda, values and principles. The new organization has already formed the first few of many anticipated partnerships to address challenges raised by climate change.
