By U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Andrew McKaskle [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This article was originally published on Conservation International.
“The foundation of Conservation International is built upon the integration of comprehensive data and responsive science. Those committed to this premise invest in good data and sound measurement tools to understand how nature is changing. These tools must be utilized to investigate whether humanity’s use of nature’s life-supporting services is sustainable or not. Just as regular doctor visits can help keep people healthy, the early detection of planetary problems is crucial to our survival.
Last week in Barcelona, we announced a visionary partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP) called HP Earth Insights. This program will revolutionize the way we monitor, report and understand the health of ecosystems.
Environmental scientists across the globe will be able to put their field research findings into mobile HP tablets and analyze and share that data in visual, user-friendly dashboards that reveal tropical changes in near real-time. HP Earth Insights will help us link tropical forest data with other data repositories at the Smithsonian Institution and Wildlife Conservation Society, and connect the dots to further populate a measure of tropical forest biodiversity known as the Wildlife Picture Index.
Previously, most indices of biodiversity were based on data from scientific literature, which has a long lag time from collection to publication. This meant that policymakers were making decisions based on information that was often five years old. Big data and information technology will help us change that…”
Read on at: Conservation International.
