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- The California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES) is an program of the California Resources Agency established to facilitate access to a variety of electronic data describing California's rich and diverse environments.
The goal of CERES is to improve environmental analysis and planning by integrating natural and cultural resource information from multiple contributors and by making it available and useful to a wide variety of users. CERES collects and integrates data and information and distributes it via the World Wide Web, tapping into important information sources and contributing to advances in the science of data management and metadata cataloging by encouraging cooperation among governmental, educational, and private groups.
CERES focuses on three related components: technology, data, and community. The first, technology, includes the development of new software and network structures to accommodate the search and retrieval, organization, and accessibility demands associated with huge volumes of data in a wide range of forms. The second, data, encompasses the conversion of vast quantities of information into digital form as well as the evaluation of existing digital data sets and the development of metadata catalogs required searching and data-quality and appropriate use assessment. The third, community, contains CERES' efforts to promote the use of the network for planning and policy and to foster the growth of new users and contributors in a far-reaching web of affiliations.
CERES is made possible by a close working relationship between the California Resources Agency and the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources (DLAWR) at UC Davis. DLAWR provides experts in remote sensing, programming using open source technologies, network operations and design, and informatics.
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