The undertakings were released at a White House climate and health conference where John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, pressed the need for greater data to compel decreases to greenhouse emissions.
“This is a science-based administration, a fact-based administration, and our climate policies have to be based on fact, have to be based on data, and we want to make those data available to everybody,” Holdren said.
The data initiative touches multiple agencies — including NASA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency — and is part of the White House proclamation of a new National Public Health Week, from April 6 to April 12, to spur national health solutions and awareness.
The 150-plus data sets are all connected to health, and are among the 560 climate-related data sets available on Data.gov, the U.S. government’s open data portal. Accompanying the release, the Department of Health and Human Services added a Health Care Facilities Toolkit on Toolkit.climate.gov, a site that delivers climate resilience techniques, strategies, case studies and tools for organizations attempting climate change initiatives.
Holdren was followed by White House Chief Data Scientist D.J. Patil, who moderated a tech industry panel with representatives from Google, Microsoft and GIS mapping software company Esri.
Google Earth Outreach Program Manager Allison Lieber confirmed that Google will continue to provide assistance with 10 million hours for high-performance computing for climate data projects — down from 50 million in 2014 — and the company will likewise provide climate data hosting on Google Earth….(More)”