Eye on Earth honored as a top sustainable solution at Rio+20

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Last night, Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, sustainability legend Gro Harlem Brundtland, IPCC Chair Rajendra K. Pachauri, EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard and 150 VIP guests celebrated the first concrete outcome at Rio+20: The launch of Sustainia100. Esri is proud to announce that Eye on Earth has been chosen for this prestigious list of solutions.

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Eye on Earth is an environmental application leveraging Esri's ArcGIS Online, developed with Microsoft and the European Environment Agency (EEA), to deliver air, noise, and water data to European citizens.

"Eye on Earth's place in the Sustainia100 shows real recognition for information sharing," said Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. "Knowledge can change our relationship with the environment, helping us become more sustainable and resilient to the challenges ahead. We hope the award will encourage even more citizens and organizations to get involved in Eye on Earth."

The Eye on Earth network provides tools for creating maps, accessing thousands of readily available maps and datasets, and managing geospatial content. The Eye on Earth platform makes it possible for users to share content with the public and among groups or to use privately. Governments, research organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the public can use the network to work together to understand problems, develop policy, design plans, and take action. Furthermore, the cloud-configured network provides the foundation for other regions to create similar environmental platforms.

"Being included on the Sustainia100 is a tremendous honor," said Jack Dangermond, Esri President. "The Eye on Earth application puts environmental and social information into the hands of many people and provides them with the tools to participate in policy and truly make a difference. The Eye on Earth network will become a catalyst for conversation. We think this is going to bring people to their feet by empowering them to understand problems and be part of the solutions."

The Eye on Earth Watch program application is used by  citizen scientists, who use their mobile devices to report environment ratings for air, bathing water quality, and noise pollution to the network.

Gathered from 56 countries spread over six continents, Sustainia100 is a complete guide to innovative and scalable solutions instrumental in creating sustainable societies. Building on ready and available solutions only, Sustainia100 is as a tangible tool for sustainability professionals - from politicians to CEOs - dedicated to create desirable and sustainable societies.

"I am very excited and inspired by this as it makes it absolutely clear that our mission is possible. That we do have the ammunition we need to tackle this challenge. That we have what it takes to create fun and attractive societies without destroying our planet," said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Honorary Chair of Sustainia.

Individually, the solutions represent sustainable innovation in areas such as city planning, energy, fashion, water and waste management, high-tech and transportation. Collectively, they provide a guide of the building blocks available for transforming our societies.

Sustainia100 is a cornerstone in Sustainia - a construction site for the desirable society we could live in if we implemented ready and available solutions. Developed by world-leading companies, organizations and experts in close collaboration with UN Global Compact and Governor Schwarzenegger's initiative Regions20, Sustainia is the first holistic introduction to the attractive sustainable future.

Sustainia100 solutions are nominees for the Sustainia Award, which honors outstanding performance within sustainability. The winner will be announced at a ceremony later this year in Copenhagen.

"Securing the planet for future generations is a global collaborative task," said Gro Harlem Brundtland, Former Prime Minister, Member of The Elders Team. "Sustainia100 demonstrates that since the first Earth Summit in 1992 solutions and innovations to tackle this challenge have been developed all over the world. We need to make more people aware of these solutions and inspire more to act. With the Sustainia100 there is no excuse for not choosing a sustainable path to the future. The solutions are there and ready for use."

About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

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