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U.N., Google Earth Map Climate Change
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Mike Johnston
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Feb 09, 2007 11:15 PST
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[http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=10487]
fter letting computer users soar over Mount Kilimanjaro's melting snows
and peer down on illegal logging in Asia, the U.N. Environment Program
(UNEP) is exploring how the latest technology can help it reach more
people, an official said on Wednesday.
It hopes to copy the success of a venture with Google Inc. that made an
atlas of before-and-after satellite images of environmental change
available to more than 100 million viewers through the interactive
mapping program Google Earth.
Now UNEP is seeking similar partnerships with firms including
Microsoft, Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems and ESRI, a California-based
computer mapping company, UNEP program officer Michael Wilson told
Reuters.
"A lot of effort is going into developing these sorts of partnerships
and finding alignment of interests," he said on the sidelines of a U.N.
environment conference in Kenya.
UNEP's "Atlas of Our Changing World" was first published in hardback in
June 2005 and features high-resolution images of changes ranging from
dramatic deforestation in South America to retreating glaciers in the
North Pole, oil exploration in Canada and the huge growth of
greenhouses in southern Spain.
In environmental terms, the book became something of a bestseller,
moving more than 10,000 copies at $150 each.
"For an organization like UNEP, that was an unprecedented success,"
said Wilson. "So we all started looking at ways we could make this
information available to more and more people."
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Posted By Mike Johnston to H2OPower at 2/09/2007 12:56:00 PM
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