A new agreement between the world leader in Geographic Information Systems Esri and NASA will provide the global scientific community with access to more up-to-date and high-quality resources.

Esri and NASA signed an agreement in late January that expands public access to NASA’s geospatial content to help research global issues including climate change, natural disasters and more.

The resources will be available in the world’s richest online geographic data library, Esri’s ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and will provide up-to-date and reliable data from nearly 100 space-based sensors that measure the state of the atmosphere, earth phenomena and ocean characteristics. Partners under this agreement will add to NASA’s existing ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World data and more services, including maps and apps. This makes NASA data even more accessible to over 10 million users of ArcGIS and the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

The signing of the agreement between Esri and NASA comes at a time when it is increasingly urgent to find science-based approaches to address the effects of climate change and other global challenges facing humanity. Making informed decisions related to these issues—from natural disasters to climate change mitigation—depends heavily on access to reliable and up-to-date geospatial data.

“We are at a critical crossroads for climate action, and it is imperative that the global community has access to reliable data to carry out this vital task – commented Jack Dangermond, Esri’s founder and president, on the agreement. Partnership – NASA data will become available to the geospatial community, so we can all contribute to the health of the planet.”

Geospatial data has always played a key role in NASA’s research initiatives, which include monitoring and studying Earth’s climate change. Esri GIS is an essential tool for NASA in creating publicly available resources such as the NASA Disaster Mapping Portal and the NASA Earth Data GIS – a cloud-based distribution system for planetary observation data, services and resources.

“We want NASA’s data to be used by the widest possible audience for good -said Gerald Guala, a scientist with NASA’s Earth Sciences Division – We appreciate the huge Esri community and are proud to take another step forward in making our earth science data more accessible.”

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