Earth HQ: A Situation Room For The Planet
Resource Watch is partnering with the Global Commons Alliance, to launch Earth HQ, a new interactive site to visualize and understand the climate and nature crisis. Presented in Glasgow at COP 26, Earth HQ offers a creative blend of near-real time data, environmental science journalism, and compelling multimedia storytelling–all on a user-friendly digital timely site. Resource Watch contributes data visualizations of timely trusted data, data integrity, and design advice.
Earth HQ is a new interactive site that enables the concerned public, journalists and NGOs to better understand the climate planetary emergency, by linking relevant climate-related data to the live events happening in the world. Its user-friendly interface allows users to interact with the latest data and insights on the state of our global commons across climate, freshwater, forest, ocean, and biodiversity. Earth HQ presents a ‘situation room for the planet’ that combines the rigor of near real-time scientific data and engaging visualization with the storytelling power of environmental journalism.
Resource Watch provides its catalogue of key datasets and visualizations for Earth HQ to track the status of earth systems and pressures, providing global regularly updated, trusted data that is needed for monitoring critical threats to the global commons and track progress towards solutions.
Earth HQ Features
Resource Watch supports key features of Earth HQ including Climate Alerts and data visualizations across the global Breaking News pages.
Climate Alerts
Climate Alerts combine headlines, imagery, and news articles with relevant data from Resource Watch, telling the story of what is happening on our planet and why.
Resource Watch provides critical contextual data enabling users to understand climate-related events. For example, when exploring active fires, users will be able to explore the location and size of the fires across the planet. A curated set of Resource Watch data widgets alongside the near real-time data from earth.nullschool.net enables users to explore a more comprehensive information ecosystem – to visualize trends, assess aggregates, and dive into other complementary data on Resource Watch for a better storytelling experience.
Video 1. Users can view near-real time coral reef stress but also see how coral reef bleaching is projected to increase in the coming decades and understand the main contributors to this phenomena.
Breaking News
The Breaking News page was developed as situation rooms for the five global commons: climate, freshwater, forest, ocean and biodiversity. On these pages users will find the latest news from our media partners NowThis Earth and Mongabay, alongside curated data visualizations from Resource Watch.
Figure 1. The EarthHQ Freshwater page displays data visualizations of water stress from Resource Watch, alongside stories and videos. Source: https://earthhq.org/freshwater
Throughout the Earth HQ development process Resource Watch has provided design and product management support to ensure that the site is accessible to users including journalists, students, activists, and concerned members of the public who are curious about the planet.
The Earth HQ site is currently in beta. Over the coming months the site will be optimized for mobile, and new features will be added. We invite you to explore the Earth HQ beta version and share your thoughts.
Figure 2. Read stories about the climate, while understanding the biggest culprits. Source: https://earthhq.org/climate
For inquiries and feedback about Resource Watch widgets and visualizations please contact Tea Tuur, Earth Dashboard Product Specialist: tea.tuur@wri.org, and for general questions about EarthHQ please contact Christine Southam, Global Commons Alliance: christine@globalcommons.org.
About Global Commons Alliance
Earth HQ was created as part of the Global Commons Alliance (GCA), as a platform to utilize media and data to inform and mobilize the public. The four GCA components are: the Earth Commission, a a high-level scientific advisory body; the Science Based Targets Network, which supports companies, cities and governments in setting targets informed by planetary boundaries; the Systems Change Lab, which will identify and monitor the systemic revolutions needed to make such targets achievable; and the Earth HQ.
Tea Tuur is the Earth Dashboard Product Specialist, Resource Watch
Anders Pedersen is the Resource Watch Director
Sergio Baldit is Communications Specialist at Resource Watch
