On SciencePoles, the scientific website of the International Polar Foundation, Polar View Project Manage Thomas Puestow of C-CORE talks about how the conglomerate of earth observation service providers he has been heading since it began in 2003 has emerged as a key player in meeting user needs during International Polar Year and beyond.
Polar View is an international conglomerate of various companies, government agencies and research institutes across Europe and Canada which provides Earth observation services to a wide variety of end users throughout the world from creating ice charts for navigation to monitoring, river ice, lake ice, snow melt, glaciers and icebergs for both public and private sector end users. Since 2003 the programme has received financial support under the European Commission’s GMES programme; however the conglomerate hopes to eventually become an independent, self-sustaining enterprise providing a "one-stop-shop" for information about the cryosphere and the Polar Regions.