It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. To better understand the work we need to do now for a sustainable future, it helps to see what's happening through data and maps. In today's talk, Jack Dangermond, the head of the mapping platform Esfrey, shares the new technology available to better understand and

manage our planet. He introduces it in his 2021 talk recorded for the countdown summit,

calling it a central nervous system for a sustainable globe.

The world that we live in is not well known.

It's fragile.

It's rich in biodiversity.

And it's increasingly impacted by human activities.

Geologists are beginning to call this era the Anthropocene.

Today our world is in trouble because humans are living carelessly.

We are threatening our very future. We are, as human beings, going to have to collectively come together and address these challenges. A sustainable

future in my mind is possible, but we're going to have to do many things, and we're going to

have to do these now. Sustainability really requires that we see

the world as one system. Today, in my field, the geospatial field, we are seeing technologies

emerge that are becoming interconnected. They're allowing us to measure, analyze, and understand

what's occurring on our globe. We're bringing together geographic information from many sources,

virtually describing everything that is occurring on our planet.

These technologies are being systematically interconnected with the web

and opening up allowing organizations to be able to see information and create what I like to describe as a geographic information system for our entire planet.

This system promises to be a platform for better understanding and managing our planet, a kind of nervous system for a more sustainable future.

A central part of the system is content.

We are creating a living atlas of our planet that provides a massive collection of authoritative

data and map layers, describing information on things like population and the economy, a wealth of information

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