The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) has entered into a cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, with Google Inc. NOAA's 25 January press release describes the six areas in which NOAA and Google may cooperate:
- Engaging the public in ongoing and historic scientific expeditions including those of the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer;
- Compiling and improving bathymetric datasets to display in Google Earth and make available for downloading;
- Expanding NOAA efforts to publish oceanographic data, especially data from the NOAA-led Integrated Ocean Observing System;
- Expanding NOAA efforts to publish climate data, especially data from the greenhouse gas monitoring system;
- Increasing the amount of data available for NOAA’s Science on a Sphere, an educational Earth science display system, [http://sos.noaa.gov/] by adapting it to display files in the Keyhole Markup Language, the file format Google Earth and Google Maps use for geographic data; and
- Providing interactive access to marine zoning and regulatory information concerning regions such as continental shelf boundaries and marine protected areas.
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