From tsunamis and earthquakes to hurricanes and bird flu, the natural disasters of the past year have underlined the urgency of a global project to pool knowledge that could limit the damage. In Johannesburg in 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development highlighted the need for co-ordinating data on the state of the earth.
Three years on, the partnership known as the Group on Earth Observations has won the support of 58 countries and 47 global organisations for a Global Earth Observation System of Systems that aims to collate information gathered by thousands of instruments world-wide.
"We've gone from zero to 100 people round the table," said Conrad Lautenbacher, one of the group's co-chairmen, told Reuters during a visit to London.
"From a scientific point of view, this represents a quantum leap in our ability to understand earth cycles and earth systems," added Lautenbacher, who is also US under-secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, as well as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Advocates of the System of Systems dismiss scepticism that national resistance to sharing information can be overcome and say the political will to achieve results is growing.
"I honestly feel that there is an increased sense of urgency," said Maryam Golnaraghi, head of the Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Programme of the World Meteorological Organisation, one of the bodies signed up to the System of Systems.
"The range of hazards that have happened this year and the media attention that disasters have generated, all this has raised awareness at the political level that disasters are not just acts of God," said Golnaraghi.
"Observation is one of the most critical components for developing capabilities that enable us to mitigate disasters."
The US administration has thrown its weight behind the project.
"The United States is making the commitment to move earth observation to the next level to benefit this next generation," Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told the Earth Observation Summit in Brussels in February, 2005. "This is one of President Bush's environmental priorities."
Beyond the United States, Golnaraghi said developing countries were particularly likely to benefit from being able to access information gathered across the globe.
"The reality is disasters happen and they tend to hit developing economies the hardest," Golnaraghi said. "They can set back development by many, many years, even decades." The target is to develop the System of Systems to provide information to users ranging from governments to scientists to industry over the next 10 years.
Golnaraghi said she hoped the benefits would begin to be felt long before then.
So far, co-operation on weather is the best example of cross-border liaison, Lautenbacher said.
The NOAA, of which he is administrator, runs the US National Hurricane Center that predicted this year's most active hurricane season on record with the help of data collected by other countries' observation systems, as well as that of the United States.
Satellites tracking hurricane formations that begin in Africa, for instance, can provide advance warning of weather heading for the United States.
"We have to reach the same stage of advancement in all the other areas," said Lautenbacher. "Weather is an example where the world has been able at the political level to exchange data."
Besides weather-related disasters, Lautenbacher and his colleagues say pooling information can play a vital role in areas such as improving water resources and energy management.
Those working on the System of Systems are also actively involved in helping to build a tsunami warning system.
In addition, they are hoping to check the spread of diseases such as malaria and bird flu as the conditions that foster them can be observed to predict how they will spread.
"There are many hazards that are not necessarily meteorological, but that are induced by hydro-meteorological conditions...that can be observed," Golnaraghi said.
"The pathogens that cause disease have conditions in which they live, just like we do," Lautenbacher said. "We have to combine the physical data with what we know in the medical world."
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