Feb 22, 2010
It appears as if the folks over at The Planetary Skin Institute have teamed up with Cisco and NASA to develop a Global Central Nervous System to “Sense, predict and act”. I don’t know about you but this sounds scary right off the bat. The apparent ruse is the usual “Climate Change” scam in order to activate their carbon markets so they can begin taxing us into oblivion.
This is obviously funded by the UN and will be used by the Globalists to complete their control grid for humanity. Merge this system with the new Echelon like “Fusion Centers” currently being set up and viola, the gates close on Alex Jones “Prison Planet”.
Let’s take a look at a few of the snippets from their site:
WHAT IS THE PLANETARY SKIN R&D PROGRAM?
THE CHALLENGE “FLYING BLIND” IN A COMPLEX AND VOLATILE WORLD
The policies and actions that will help move the world to a low-carbon economy and address the large-scale risks associated with climate change are profound and far-reaching. They require many different individuals and groups to take between them a vast array of small and large decisions, every day. Today, those decisions are made with only partial knowledge of the possible options, benefits, costs, and risks. Decision-makers are, in essence, flying blind. Whether acting globally or locally, they lack a trusted decision information infrastructure for mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.
THE SOLUTION
CREATE A GLOBAL NERVOUS SYSTEM TO SENSE, PREDICT AND ACT
This lack implies that we need a new way to make collaboration possible. In many ways the solution lies literally at our fingertips. The skin that covers our bodies provides information from ‘sensors’ distributed throughout the body. Nerve endings in the skin gather sensory information and transmit it through the central nervous system for processing. The body responds with appropriate remedial action to regulate and adapt to change. Planetary Skin can be thought of as a nervous system, covering the entire planet and providing a research and development platform for open collaboration between the public, private, academic and NGO sectors. It will collect data from space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks and other sources of structured and unstructured data. It will model, predict, analyze and report in a standardized usable format over an open and adaptable cloud platform that is governed as a global public-good. Today, a vast amount of data is collected daily from millions of sources across the globe, and then stored in millions of disparate silos. The proliferation of additional data created by the “Internet of Things”—where all sensors and machines that can be IP-enabled will be—can only grow the amount of data exponentially. So the problem is not the amount of data; it is that the data is isolated from other data and inputs, and cannot provide meaningful insights for decision-making and action with proper local context. Planetary Skin assimilates those disparate and siloed data sets held in public and private enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It provides a common platform for integrating data from all sources. This includes scientific, economic, engineering and risk models enabled by high performance computational and communication networks, visualization and collaboration platforms, across multiple disciplines and across all sectors. It analyzes data originating from space, airborne, maritime and terrestrial sensor networks located around the world (SensorSpaces). These, in turn, connect to a Web 2.0 mash-up of decision-support tools (DecisionSpaces). These tools facilitate management of resources, risks, and new environmental markets, enabling innovation by private sector entrepreneurs, next-generation regulatory agencies, and social entrepreneurs (CommonSpaces).
Sense, predict, act
Together, the three interlocking subsystems of Planetary Skin—SensorSpaces, DecisionSpaces, and CommonSpaces—make up the platform for global environmental situational awareness, an early warning system, informed decision-making, and connection with new markets and sources of funding to speed the transition to a low-carbon economy. This is a global first: a unique public/private research and development collaboration led initially by Cisco and NASA that harnesses the power of existing data, modelling and technology capabilities to create the decision-support “information infrastructure” needed to successfully address the many challenges of climate change and related complex global problems.
OVERVIEW
At a number of recent international meetings, public and private sector leaders agreed that in addition to appropriate target setting (eg. that follow the evolving science) and predictable large-scale financing, meeting the challenges of climate change will require the creation of transparent and trusted mechanisms for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and of decision-support capabilities to enable both mitigation and adaptation execution programs to address the climate change challenge. The essential preconditions to effective agreements in climate change are the trust and transparency that come from reliable and auditable measurement. We can’t manage what we can’t measure. The transition to a low carbon economy will require a vast array of small and large decisions made by a range of governments, corporations, communities and other stakeholders. But currently they are forced to make these with only very partial information. To unlock reliable, scaleable, open participatory mechanisms to achieve trust and informed decision making we need to pool the assets and capabilities of researchers in public and private sectors, leading space agencies, NGOs, think tanks, academia and international scientific institutions. No single institution has the capabilities, assets or knowhow to complete the R&D program required on its own– national and international cross-sectoral collaborations are key.
OVERVIEW
The Planetary Skin R&D program will be based on the fundamental scientific and other research & development strengths of the participating institutions to address the strategic research themes of ‘Complex Water, Food, Energy and Integrated Land Use Systems’, ‘Complex Energy Systems’ and ‘Planetary System-wide Transitions’ with a focus on co-developing the three core capabilities of the Planetary Skin decision-support platform to:
- manage resources productively and effectively (energy, biomass, food, water, land, etc)
- manage risks (climate change related risks in sea level rise affecting coastal infrastructures, drought-related crop yield reductions, disease proliferation and pandemics, etc); and
- enable new environmental markets (carbon, water, biodiversity, etc).
Complex Water, Food, Energy and Integrated Land Use Systems
- Land-Use and Terrestrial Carbon Sink Management
- Food Security
- Fuel, Food, Fibre and Feed Land Competition
- Adaptive Water Management
- Securing biodiversity
Land-Use and Terrestrial Carbon Sink Management
Maintaining and expanding global rural carbon sinks (eg related to forestry and agriculture) will contribute about half of the cost-effective mitigation of carbon emissions required to reach 2020 targets. The problem today is that, measured solely in terms of monetary value, trees in the rainforests are worth more dead than alive. Reversing that requires capturing the true value of the carbon sink that rainforests provide. We estimate that the economic value of eliminating deforestation exceeds US$400 billion per year. In contrast, funding the associated opportunity, monitoring, protection, and transaction costs are likely to be in the range of US 20 – $40 billion per year. This opportunity for high returns is ripe for innovation through the research & development of a global “Forest Skin.” This will take the form of an open network platform for near real-time, highly distributed mass remote sensing, measurement, risk-profiling and continuous monitoring of carbon stocks and flows. This will generate trust and enable collaboration among relevant players in all sectors. This platform will use a mash-up of geo-referenced satellite, unmanned aerial vehicle, participatory networks and multiple ground-based sensor networks to estimate the forest’s carbon stock dynamics and its risk profile. Food Security Sustainable agricultural growth in developing countries is challenged as never before—by climate change, increasingly volatile food and energy markets, natural resource exploitation, and a growing population aspiring to a better standard of living. The high world food prices of 2008 heightened awareness of the links between research and investments in food production systems and human wellbeing. Determining appropriate agricultural research, investments, decision-support capabilities and policy responses is critical to meeting the nutritional needs of a global population that will reach nine billion 2050, while protecting the environment and reducing poverty. Climate change itself poses significant challenges. Agriculture will have to shift across regions and/or enable growing of new crops. The development of enhanced and innovative agricultural production systems that a) use less resources (water, land, phosphate), b) are adapted to climatic variability (i.e. that are resilient), and c) mitigate climate change with least emissions of greenhouse gases are needed.
Fuel, Food, Fibre and Feed Land Competition
There are growing fears over the competition between different land use functions for food, fibre, feed and fuel. Expanding agriculture to assure food security might lead to conflicts in areas rich in biodiversity. In other regions, tensions are rising between agriculture and the expanding cities. Bio-renewable resources displace the use of fossil fuels in the production of chemicals, materials, liquid fuel and energy by using biomass as their feedstock. The median estimate for sustainable, global biomass potential is approximately seven times current levels. The potential for improved efficiency in the production of bio-renewables is in excess of four-fold. PSI will address the major challenges of understanding the opportunities and developing the decision-support capabilities to manage the many tradeoffs involved in global integrated land use. Integrated and balanced approaches are required to address trade-offs between societal needs and policies such as developing bio-based economies to reduce dependency on fossil fuels; between restoration of degraded soils and the responsible use of marginal land. Land management decisions that modify water, soil, biogeochemical and energy balances, ecosystem services, food and fibre supplies and other land-surface properties such as albedo and soil structure can only be addressed with an appropriately balanced and integrated approach. This requires a holistic framework for cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary collaborative decision support to understand and manage the trade-offs.
Adaptive Water Management
Climate Change will bring profound changes to local and global water management. Shifting weather patterns and rising sea levels will lead to more pronounced droughts in some areas and floods in others. Providing reliable water supplies to existing urban and rural environments will become increasingly difficult in the context of tighter linkages between water and energy. Advanced decision-support capabilities are essential to manage Earth’s water resources and to reduce the effect of floods and droughts. PSI’s research & development capabilities will leverage integrated configurations of ground-, airborne- and satellite-based technologies to monitor the state of land, catchments, rivers, defenses and vulnerable areas in near-real time. This will allow us to build, for example, decision support systems to optimise water (re)allocation, reservoir and water transport management, hydropower systems, and for devising short-term crop planting strategies and precision farming in agriculture. PSI will also deliver real time integration of models and information for improved early warning systems for floods and droughts to assess, for example, the reliability of flood infrastructure, to improve evacuation strategies, and develop model-driven management strategies to predict and minimize the impacts of flooding and drought.
Complex Energy Systems
Our R&D portfolio in this domain will focus on :
- Adaptive end-to-end energy systems
- Integrated ‘energy-mobility-built environment’ virtual ecosystems
- GHG monitoring and environmental market enablement
Planetary System-Wide Transitions
Our R&D portfolio in this domain will focus on :
- Planetary Boundaries and
- Climate Threshholds
- Disease vectors and Pandemics
- Urban-Rural-Ocean transitions
- Major Dislocations
An Evolving Partnership Model
To develop the core capabilities and applications associated to the Planetary Skin platform, a number of global and regional partnerships are in development. These will create cross-disciplinary collaboration clusters around the following areas: global platform R&D capability development (core horizontal, Earth Observation and modeling capabilities, ICT, etc); application R&D domains (core vertical capabilities in energy, water, food, land-use decision support , etc); international science and climate change policy advisory partners (contextual advisory); regional climate science/policy/technology networks (regional networks). While development of the Planetary Skin platform is aimed at creating a vital climate change decision-support system of systems, success will also rely on drawing together experts and capabilities across sectors, institutions and regions to participate in an international system development effort. So, along with the core technical challenge, we face the need to organize scientists, engineers, policymakers, businesses, financiers and citizens into a collaborative network or ‘connected commons’. As a collective problem, climate change requires collective solutions. No single organization, enterprise or public institution or group of citizens can resolve this problem alone. Programs like the UN’s IPCC AR5 process, the UNFCCC Adaptation Taskforce, the UN’s Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System (GIVAS), the CGIAR Challenge on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), the Group of Earth Observation and GEOSS, the IGBP, WCRP , DIVERSITAS and IHDP programs under the Earth System Science Partnership, and WMO’s recently mandated ‘Global Framework for Climate Services’ amongst others , are needed to spur international, inter-governmental collaboration and cooperation in the policies, in the science, the modelling and in the earth observation required. New, hybrid organizations, are needed to stimulate innovation from, create opportunities for, and leverage the capabilities of non-governmental/non-profit and private sector actors and stakeholders working with such governmental actors. Engaging such a range of organizations and partnerships in collaborative activity will fuel development, deployment, operation and sustainability of the systems and practices under development.
KEY PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
The PSI’s program’s activities will take place in seven regional hubs across the world, in several phases. The key products of PSI will focus on:
- Undertaking rapid prototyping projects that demonstrate value to decision-makers coordinated through global network, governance, outreach and R&D agenda
- Providing unique global data sets and modeling outputs through PSI’s open climate change decision support cloud infrastructure
- Hosting the Global Climate Solutions Exchange for the benefit of policymakers, businesses and communities globally to jumpstart execution towards a low carbon economy
- Development of the roadmaps and business plans for the public-private partnerships to enable replication and scaling of the Planetary Skin platforms
- Facilitating the transition of prototypes into operation through both open source/innovation and venturing
Planetary Skin Institute will research, develop and prototype an approach to provide near-to-real-time global monitoring of environmental conditions and changes. This will deliver the required decision support capabilities to manage global resources, risks and build environmental markets.
Check out the videos here
