Microsoft and European Environmental Agency Sign Five Year Deal to Map Water Quality

Network World has the story (press release) of “Eye on Earth” a site that show water quality scores of 21,000 swimming sites across Europe in five languages: Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German and English.

Of note:

- the site will eventually be expanded to show air pollution, biodiversity and national park information

- symbology is based on a “a stop-light ranking system: Green means the water complies with EU standards, red means it falls below standards and yellow means the site hasn’t been sufficiently tested”

- users can leave comments and their evaluation of water quality

- “The EEA is using Microsoft’s SQL server database to collect data, which has a geospatial feature that can take data from a particular area and plot it on a map, said Ludo de Bock, worldwide Microsoft director for the EU and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The feature also enables new data coming into the EEA to be uploaded to the Web site in real time, [EEA spokeswoman Gülcin] Karadeniz said.”

- there’s a desktop widget for the app that require Vista