NASA has partnered with Cisco to develop an online collaborative global monitoring platform called the "Planetary Skin" to capture, collect, analyse and report data on environmental conditions around the world.

Under the terms of the ‘Space Act Agreement’, NASA and Cisco will work together to develop the Planetary Skin as an online collaborative platform to capture and analyse data from satellite, airborne, sea- and land-based sensors across the globe. This data will be made available for the general public, governments and businesses to measure, report and verify environmental data in near-real-time to help detect and adapt to global climate change.

"In the past 50 years, NASA's expertise has been applied to solving humanity's challenges, including playing a part in discovering global climate change," said S. Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Centre. "The NASA-Cisco partnership brings together two world-class organisations that are well equipped with the technologies and skills to develop and prototype the Planetary Skin infrastructure."

Readers can follow the project here: http://www.planetaryskin.org/