Creating a Planetary Nervous System
Planet OS CEO Rainer Sternfeld’s lightning talk at the UN Solutions Summit on September 27, 2015 at United Nations Headquarters
A little background
The United Nations is making a bold but a necessary leap into the future by adopting the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda for the next 15 years. To learn what kind of ideas and innovations are already out there, The United Nations Foundation in collaboration with the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and a handful of governments around the world invited innovators, technologists, engineers and scientists to propose their solutions.
Of the 800 proposals from over 100 countries that came in, 14 were selected to present at the inaugural Solutions Summit at the UN Headquarters on September 27, 2015.
Planet OS is truly honored to have been one of the innovators to present our solution to 250 senior policy makers and technology executives from around the world. Here is our founder and CEO Rainer Sternfeld’s lightning talk at the UN Solutions Summit.
Dear Friends,
In 1998, former U.S. vice president Al Gore introduced a concept called Digital Earth, a virtual planet that is georeferenced, connected to the world’s digital knowledge. In the past 15 years, we have witnessed a quiet revolution in the deployment of sensor networks acquiring atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial data.
Sadly, this public data is hard to find, access and use.
In 2012, I founded marinexplore.org. Starting with a handful of Estonians, we built a search engine for public ocean data and a community for ocean professionals. We got data from 35 organizations and 40,000 instruments worldwide, with 8,000 excited community members asking for more. We learned that unless we expanded beyond oceans, our unique approach would not make a difference in the world. That’s why Planet OS was born.
Planet OS is a new revolutionary search engine designed for the next generation of Digital Earth delivering access to public data without moving it. Combined with Planet OS Toolkit, software developers can work with domain experts and create bespoke applications that solve some of their most pressing problems.
How much data is out there? Nobody knows for sure, but we know that our new system has indexed more data in 3 months than we had in the past 3 years. We hope that in not so distant future we will deliver it to your fingertips.
What would you solve with better Earth data?
Imagine all planet Earth Data interconnected available to the creativity of the best minds of our time, from researchers to software developers, but also the curious child who is just starting to explore the world?
Planet OS can provide solutions in affordable & clean energy, combating climate change, and protecting marine ecosystems. For example, Planet OS is being used to develop:
a real-time dashboard for increasing power output of sustainable wind energy. This happens by combining public weather data with turbine data in one system; replace spreadsheets with real-time environmental monitoring for the offshore and maritime industry; and use sound field analysis to help to reduce man-made noise in the oceans.
Al Gore said we need a Digital Earth. I think what we really need is a Planetary Nervous System. Help us to build a resilient, interconnected network which allows us to truly understand our Planet, and take action for a sustainable future right now.
Thank you!
If you would like to contribute ideas on data sources and datasets for the search engine, please get in touch at opendata@planetos.com
Happy celebration after the Summit. From left to right: Planet OS founder and CEO Rainer Sternfeld, Chief Technology Officer of U.S. Megan Smith, Planet OS Director of Product Development Chris Kalima.
