Esri, one of the largest providers worldwide for Geographic Information System software, has recently announced its partnership with GEOSS. GEOSS, the Group on Earth Observation System of Systems, which includes over 140 governments and organizations, was established to monitor the entire face of the Earth in order to address issues such as disasters, health, energy, climate, agriculture, ecosystems, biodiversity, water and weather events. It will proactively link together existing and planned observing systems around the world and support the development of new systems where gaps currently exist. GEOSS is based mainly on satellites, but also includes a network of environmental sensors on land, in freshwater lakes and streams, and, to a growing extent, in the lower atmosphere and the oceans.
Esri foresees to support the work of GEOSS by providing the community with access to Esri GIS community content, expertise and technology through the GEOSS Data Access Broker, as well as to collaboration tools via the ArcGIS platform and by supporting the extension of GEOSS to include ArcGIS Online publicly-available data. In doing so, Esri will work with the Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) Lab in Italy to integrate ArcGIS Online into the GEOSS Data Access Broker. This will result in the discoverability of all public content from ArcGIS Online through many of the search portals that participate in this network (e.g., DataOne, CEOS, CUAHSI, OneGeology, IOOS).
During the Tenth Plenary Session and Ministerial summit of GEO (GEO-X), taking place from today till 17 January in Geneva, Switzerland, ESSI Lab will showcase the first results from the new collaboration between Esri and GEOSS.
