Planetary Skin officially launched on March 3, 2009 at the Symposium “U.S. Climate Action: A Global Economic Perspective"

The Planetary Skin concept results from Cisco ‘s Internet Business Solutions Group years of public and private sector collaborations to address climate change – with scientists, government leaders, non–government organizations, think tanks and communities from around the world. Our year long NASA partnership accelerated the effort in 2008 collaborating to conceptualise, research, and co–develop the strategy and the plans underpinning the Planetary Skin initiative. NASA and Cisco Systems, Inc. are now embarking on a multi–year, deep and broad R&D public–private partnership which is action focused before we move on to rapid replication and global scaling of the capabilities.

Cisco Systems, Inc. and NASA on March 3rd, announced a partnership to develop an online collaborative global monitoring platform, called the "Planetary Skin," to capture, collect, analyze and report data on environmental conditions around the world.

Under the terms of a Space Act Agreement, NASA and Cisco will work together to develop the Planetary Skin to be an online collaborative platform to capture and analyze data from satellite, airborne, sea– and land–based sensors across the globe. This data will then be made available for the general public, governments and businesses to measure, report and verify environmental data in near–real–time to help them detect and adapt to global climate change.