The White House announced on Wednesday that it will release different climate data tools for the Climate Data Initiative with the help of technology from Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Esri.
The Obama Administration said in a blog post that the tools will be used for the "Climate Action Plan", according to NBC News. Introduced by President Obama last June, the plan aims to decrease pollution and help people prepare for climate change and extreme weather.
The White House is looking to make it easier for the public, researchers, and companies to access climate change data, the Verge reported. Data.gov, one of the new tools, is a site that tracks sea level rise and coastal flooding through different data sets. The White House said other data will be added to help keep track of issues such as energy infrastructure, food supply and human health.
Google aims to create a high-resolution drought mapping for the U.S. mainland in order to give more data to communities so they can be ready for climate change, according to USA Today. The company will use federal databases to build the first high-resolution terrain map of Earth to show the change of sea levels and other climate-related changes.
Esri will make climate-related maps and apps available to communities as well, USA Today reported. Pat Cummens, Esri's government policy strategist, said the company should share its tools and what it has learned, adding, "Everyone wins in the end- and hopefully, the environment."
Additional sources of data for the initiative include NASA, NOAA, FEMA, USGS, and many others. White House advisors John Podesta and John Holdren said in a blog post that the collection of data will eventually evolve into a destination for tools that use the information, the Verge reported.
"By taking the enormous data sets regularly collected by NASA, NOAA, and other agencies and applying the ingenuity, creativity, and expertise of technologists and entrepreneurs, the Climate Data Initiative will help create easy-to-use tools for regional planners, farmers, hospitals, and businesses across the country- and empower America's communities to prepare themselves for the future," Podesta and Holdren said.
