"Google Earth on steroids"?

A recent article in MIT's 'Technology Review' describes plans at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich to create a 'Living Earth Simulator', a device which will mine huge amounts of economic, environmental and health data to create a 'model' of the entire planet in real time. The article dubs it 'Google-Earth-on-steroids'.

The plan, proposed by Dirk Helbing, is to use this model to simulate the behaviour of entire economies and societies and then to predict and prevent crises from emerging.

The article says:

"Think of it as a kind of Google Earth for society. We've all played with Google's 3D map of the Earth that uses real data to reveal not only the town where you live and work but your home and back garden too.

Imagine a similar model that uses in real time things like financial transactions, health records, travel details, carbon dioxide emissions and so on to build a model of not just the planet but the entire society that populates it. Helbing calls it 'reality mining'.

Helbing's simulator will look for economic bubbles and collapses, warn of global pandemics and suggest how to tackle them, it will model and predict the outcome of regional conflicts and determine the effect of our behaviour on the climate. He even wants to create 'situation rooms' in which global leaders can view and manage crises as they occur."

More information from Technology Review