News & Events

October 4, 2008

Deputy director Marc Levy and postdoctoral fellow Sandra Baptista participated in a conference, Tough Choices: Land Use Change Under a Changing Climate, held October 2–3 in Berlin and sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, German Research Foundation, and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Levy gave a keynote address, “Ecosystem Service Tradeoffs: Global Examples Involving Biodiversity Conservation, Poverty Reduction and Disease Prevention,” which presented the results of two recent research projects that shed light on the nature of difficult tradeoffs among competing ecosystem services. He summarized the findings of a study looking at the relationship between the distribution of human poverty and biodiversity, and of a study identifying driving forces (one of which is biodiversity) of emerging infectious diseases. Both studies illustrated the need for more sophisticated approaches to understanding and managing tradeoffs. Baptista presented a poster, “Climate Hazards and Adaptation to Climate Change in Metropolitan Florianópolis.” The poster details a case study of land use decision making and institutional adaptation to climate variability and change at the local/regional scale in metropolitan Florianópolis, which is situated in the low elevation coastal zone of Santa Catarina State. The study explores how knowledge of local institutions (and their multiscale social and land use contexts) can support cross-site comparisons and can contribute to analyses at broader spatial and organizational scales.

See: Poster

October 3, 2008

CIESIN will highlight its work on the impacts of climate change, vulnerability to natural disasters, and the sustainability of the Hudson River Watershed, as part of the theme, “Science to Sustain the Planet," at the annual Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Open House, Saturday, October 4 from 10am to 4pm. The entire Lamont campus will be host to a projected turnout of more than 4,000 teachers, students, parents, and members of the general public from the greater New York metropolitan area. The Open House was started soon after Lamont’s inception in 1949 to communicate current developments in the Earth Sciences to the public, and how increased understanding of the Earth helps preserve its future. CIESIN has participated in the Open House annually since 1998. This year CIESIN will feature a new Web portal and interactive mapping tool for the Hudson River watershed, as well as a quiz for students.

October 1, 2008

Tan Kun, a graduate student in the School of Environmental Science and Spatial Informatics from the China University of Mining and Technology, will spend about a year in residence as a visiting scholar at CIESIN. Mr. Tan will be working with CIESIN staff to use remote sensing data and image processing techniques to identify and characterize intercity roads and related infrastructure. Accurate data on roads are especially poor in developing countries, but important for both research and applications in a variety of fields such as disaster management, conservation, public health, and development.

September 26, 2008

Recent activities by CIESIN staff include participation by senior staff associate Meredith Golden in a consultancy forum,“The Public Health Impacts of Drought: Guidance for State, Local, and Tribal Health Departments,” that was held in Atlanta September 17–19. Sponsored by the NCEH at the CDC in partnership with the EPA, the AWWA, and the NOAA, the forum gathered together more than 30 national experts from a wide range of organizations. Participants offered information and best practices for the development of a guidance document to address the public health impacts of drought.

CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert R. Downs presented a paper co-authored with CIESIN director Robert Chen, “Exploring Collaborative Models for Sustainable Governance of Digital Collections of Scientific Data,” at DAPS ‘08 workshop held September 22 in Baltimore, Maryland. The workshop was given in conjunction with the MSST2008 and supported by the NSF. Later in the week, Chen and geographic information specialist Greg Yetman participated in two meetings concerned with international sharing of remote sensing and other spatial data, held in Boulder September 22–26. In his capacity as secretary-general of the CODATA, Chen presented an update on the development of implementation guidelines for the Data Sharing Principles to the GEO Architecture and Data Committee. Yetman then participated in the kickoff workshop for the second phase of the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-2), which will demonstrate interoperability between different data systems, analytic services, map clients, and portals. CIESIN plans to provide both data and client services to the pilot effort.

See: GEOSS Workshop Information

September 19, 2008

Deputy director Marc Levy participated in a joint forum, “Managing Natural Resources in Post-Conflict Societies: Lessons in Making the Transition to Peace.” The two-day forum, held at Columbia University on September 17-18, was part of a research project involving the Environmental Law Institute, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the University of Tokyo, and the World Conservation Union. The project seeks to understand how effective natural resource management can assist in peacebuilding. Levy is a member of the project advisory committee and is writing a paper with former CIESIN post-doctoral scholar Christian Webersik, now at the United Nations University in Yokohama, Japan. CIESIN researchers Sandra Baptista, Lauren Berry, and Alex Fischer also participated in the forum. CIESIN served as local host for the forum as part of a broader partnership between UNEP’s Post-Conflict and Natural Disaster Management Branch and the Earth Institute. Within that partnership CIESIN is working with UNEP on graduate training curriculum development, student internships, and other initiatives.

See: Meeting report (PDF 2.12 MB)

Staff and students from Brazil's University of Campinas pose with Alex de Sherbinin (back row, 2nd from left) and Susana Adamo (back row, 4th from right).

CIESIN senior staff associate Alex de Sherbinin and associate research scientist Susana Adamo travelled to the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in São Paulo state, Brazil to lead a workshop on spatial data integration September 15-17. The workshop was offered to a group of staff members and graduate students at the university’s Population Studies Unit (NEPO). A variety of data integration methods developed by CIESIN were presented, accompanied by hands-on training exercises using ArcMap and Geoda software packages.  

Unicamp is one of the public universities of São Paulo. Created in 1962, its original aim was to promote science education. Unicamp is now responsible for about 15% of all Brazilian research.

See: University of Campinas 
       NEPO 


          

September 12, 2008

Human activities have contributed to habitat loss for a large number of species worldwide. In response, species mapping has become an increasingly important tool for conservation priority-setting and ecological modeling. Now a consortium of conservation organizations—NatureServe, IUCN, Conservation International, and World Wildlife Fund-USA—has developed a vast digital library of the distribution of birds and mammals of the Americas and amphibians of the world. To make these data more useful for a wide range of applications, CIESIN’s NASA-funded Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) converted the entire collection of shapefiles to raster format at 1-km grid-cell resolution. Basic or advanced searches may be undertaken for species in each of the three classes—amphibia, aves, and mammalia—using any number of criteria including class, family, genus, and endangerment status according to the IUCN Red List. Users may download the search results as zip files, with a readme file explaining how to use the data and a full metadata record of each of the data sets bundled in the file. The Web site provides the original vector data (in ESRI shape file format), the original grids (a raster version of the vector data), and presence grids (raster data depicting the presence or absence for each species). The grids are distributed in GeoTIFF format. In addition, SEDAC has created “richness grids” that describe the number of species by class and family found in each grid cell. Data sets include:

• 5,810 species of amphibia
• 4,166 species of aves
• 1,716 species of mammalia

Users may download maps showing species richness at continental and global scales for each of the three classes.

See: Species Distribution Grids Web site

September 10, 2008

Sandra Baptista, a new Earth Institute postdoctoral fellow, has begun a two-year appointment at CIESIN. Baptista plans to expand on her doctoral research on demographic change, urbanization, vegetation dynamics, and environmental governance in southern Brazil, including the examination of vulnerabilities and adaptation to climate change in Brazil’s coastal city-regions. She will also provide scientific expertise on the integration of social science, ecological, and remote sensing data to the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) hosted by CIESIN. Her master’s and PhD degrees are in geography from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and she received an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and Portuguese and Brazilian studies from Brown University. 

September 4, 2008

CIESIN senior staff associate Alex de Sherbinin gave a presentation, “Designing A Data Commons for Sustainability Science: Lessons Learned from a World Data Center,” at the InterAcademy Panel Workshop on Open Access to Scientific Literature and Other Digital Scientific Information Resources in Central America and the Caribbean offered September 3–4 in Havana, Cuba. The workshop focused on providing greater access to scientific information and data over the Internet in ways that benefit sustainable development. Representatives from the Cuban Academy of Sciences and other academies in the region were present, together with representatives of the Science Commons and other international participants in the growing area of the “information commons.”

See:  Presentation
        Workshop Program

August 21, 2008

The long-term archive (LTA) board of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) met August 20 in Palisades, New York to review progress implementing the LTA and to consider the addition of new data. Established by SEDAC in collaboration with the Columbia University Libraries, the LTA is meant to ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of SEDAC data and information resources. As part of the meeting, Robert Cartolano, director of the Library Information Technology Office, gave an overview of Columbia’s efforts to establish a long-term digital archive to serve the broader needs of the University. As described in the Library’s Strategic Plan for 2006–2009, SEDAC’s LTA is serving as a testbed for integrating existing scientific data collections with this planned campus resource. The LTA Board is chaired by Robert Downs, CIESIN senior digital archivist, and includes representatives from the Libraries, Columbia University Information Technology, and the Earth Institute.

See: SEDAC LTA
       Columbia University Libraries Strategic Plan

August 11, 2008

As a representative of the NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers, CIESIN user services manager Joe Schumacher helped staff the NASA Earth Science booth at the 2008 Ecological Society of America meeting held this year in Milwaukee August 4–7. Schumacher demonstrated some of the data products of special interest to the ecological community, produced by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. Demonstrations included the Human Footprint data and the Terra Viva SEDAC Viewer (both updated in 2008), and the new Global Species Grids data set of birds and mammals of the Americas and amphibians of the world. The Global Species Grids Web site, which provides access to vector and raster representation of the distribution of nearly 12,000 species, is currently in its beta version and due to be released next month.The Ecological Society of America (ESA) aims to improve communication among ecologists, increase available resources for ecological science, and promote its effective use in environmental decision making.

See: 2008 Ecological Society of America Meeting

August 7, 2008

Greg Yetman, Mark Becker, and Tricia Chai-Onn staff the CIESIN exhibit at the ESRI conference.

Staff from CIESIN’s geospatial applications division, including associate director Mark Becker and geographic information specialists Greg Yetman and Tricia Chai-Onn, attended the 28th Annual ESRI International User Conference held August 4–8 in San Diego, California. This year CIESIN was invited to participate in a special Maps, Charts and Data Production/Spatial Data Infrastructure Showcase to highlight its work developing and distributing global data sets. The Human Footprint, Global Poverty Mapping Project and Gridded Population of the World (GPW) were among the featured data sets. The conference, which offered a variety of workshops on the latest technology from ESRI, expects more than 14,000 attendees over the course of the week.

See: 2008 ESRI Conference
       ESRI Showcase

August 5, 2008

Ariel Zucker discusses her poster with Ousmane Ndiaye, a PhD student in Columbia's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The relationship between antibiotic consumption and human emerging infectious diseases  (EIDs) was the subject of research presented by CIESIN summer research assistant Ariel Zucker under the auspices of the Earth Intern program at Columbia University’s Lamont Campus. Although the relationship between antimicrobial consumption and antimicrobial resistance has been established, Zucker’s study, undertaken with deputy director Marc Levy and research associate Valentina Mara, is the first to use information on cross-national variation in antibiotic use to help explain differences in the rate of emerging infectious disease outbreak globally. A particularly challenging aspect of the study was assembling comparable antiobiotic use data on a large number of countries. Using analysis of emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004 that was the basis of the landmark study of which Levy was a co-author, “Global Trends in Emerging Infectious Diseases,” Zucker’s research suggests that national data on antibiotic consumption is a useful predictor of the risk of EID outbreak. For this reason, it would be beneficial to quantify antibiotic use more effectively than is done at present.  Zucker will begin her senior year as an economics major at Columbia College.

See: Poster (PDF 109 KB)

July 31, 2008

CIESIN has been awarded a five-year contract for more than $20 million from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to continue operating the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Established in 1994, SEDAC is one of the Earth Science Data Centers in NASA’s Earth Observing System. SEDAC plays a unique role in integrating social science data and information with remote sensing data and in supporting diverse communities of researchers and applied users working at the intersection of the social and earth sciences. SEDAC will continue to develop and maintain interdisciplinary data products and interactive applications such as its gridded population data products, environmental sustainability indicator collection, natural hazards data sets, climate change vulnerability data, and online and standalone mapping tools. SEDAC will also continue to host the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Socioeconomic Data Distribution Centre (DDC), the World Data Center for Human Interactions in the Environment of the International Council for Science (ICSU), and the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN).

The new NASA contract will enable CIESIN to enhance SEDAC’s standards-compliant Web mapping services and other interactive tools to support a range of research and operational systems dealing with disaster mitigation and response, conservation and land use, poverty and food security, and climate change vulnerability, impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. CIESIN will build on its partnerships with scientists at the Earth Institute and with the Columbia University Libraries to increase the longevity and depth of SEDAC’s data holdings and ensure their long-term preservation and accessibility. A key focus over the next five years will be to make SEDAC data and services accessible through the planned Global Earth Observing System of Systems, an international initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

SEDAC will continue to provide direct support to users through its User Services office. The SEDAC User Working Group, chaired by Prof. Harlan Onsrud of the University of Maine, provides ongoing strategic advice and guidance to SEDAC activities. The contract performance period will extend through July 2013.

See: SEDAC

July 14, 2008

Improving systems for submitting data to a digital repository for preservation is the focus of a paper presented by CIESIN senior digital archivist, Robert R. Downs, at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Digital Library Conference, which took place July 9 at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Co-authored with CIESIN director Robert S. Chen, the paper, “Balancing the Need for the Efficient Submission of Scientific Data with the Need to Collect Metadata,” was written in response to issues that arise when attempting to meet requirements for a trustworthy digital repository. The authors outline a system for Web-based submission of data to a digital repository, focusing on self-submission as well as work flow for data review and preparation. Downs also served as a panelist for a session (“Using Open Source Software:What it Means for Your Institution”) that explored various approaches to adopting the use of open-source software in digital libraries. Downs argued against an “either/or” approach (open-source vs. commercial  off-the-shelf software) and called for consideration of a “hybrid” model, in which users work with commercial vendors to develop products and services based on open-source software. 

See: Mid-Atlantic Digital Library Conference

July 11, 2008

CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy travelled to Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, for a meeting late June organized by the League of Arab States to evaluate approaches to constructing aggregate environmental performance indexes in the region. At the meeting, Levy described the strengths and weaknesses of the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), which was produced from 2000 through 2005, and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), produced since 2006. (The most recent version of the EPI, released in early 2008, is featured in the July 7–14 issue of Newsweek magazine’s special report, “Green Countries.”) Levy has led CIESIN's collaborative efforts with Yale University on all of the Index activities. Later in the trip Levy met with officials from the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to provide advice on a planned EPI for the Emirate. The Abu Dhabi index will show how the Emirate is doing in key areas, such as air, water, waste, biodiversity, and environmental health and safety. At the end of July Levy will return to Abu Dhabi with CIESIN researcher Alex de Sherbinin to participate in a follow-up meeting. 

See:  Environmental Sustainability Index
        Environmental Performance Index

A new assessment projecting the impact of climate change on U.S. and global security issues over the course of the next two decades, based in part on analysis prepared by CIESIN for the National Intelligence Council (NIC), was delivered to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee for a briefing June 25. The assessment itself is classified but CIESIN’s report and data are publicly available here. CIESIN’s analysis ranked countries by looking at three climate risks: sea-level rise, increased water scarcity, and vulnerability based on projected temperature change in relation to capacity to a nation’s ability to adapt. Countries with the most people exposed to sea-level rise were China, the Philippines, Egypt and Indonesia. Although most countries with high exposure to sea-level rise had low levels of exposure to historical risks of political instability, the study found a number of countries where the opposite was true (where high vulnerability based on projected temperature change and levels of adaptive capacity accompanied historically high risks of political instability): South Africa, Nepal, Morocco, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Paraguay, Yemen, Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire. “The science of climate impacts does not give us definitive answers to certain questions about the impact of climate change—for example, how climate change might worsen conflicts in Darfur,” said Marc Levy, CIESIN deputy director and a co-author of the studies. “However, we can pinpoint areas of high projected climate change that are also in historically politically unstable regions; this suggests that climate change is likely to heighten political risks.” Along with CIESIN, other open sources used in the assessment included the U.S. Climate Change Program; the Center for Naval Analyses; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the RAND Corporation; and Arizona State University.

See: Assessment of Select Climate Change Impacts on U.S. National Security
       More information  
      

June 20, 2008

Robert Worrest, retiring CIESIN employee, is honored at CIESIN’s Tenth Anniversary Party June 20.

An outdoor afternoon party attended by CIESIN staff, alumni, and many Columbia University colleagues and friends was held at the Lamont campus in Palisades, June 20 to celebrate CIESIN’s 10-year anniversary as part of the Earth Institute (EI). The event also marked the upcoming retirement of associate director Robert Worrest and former CIESIN director Roberta Balstad. The gathering of more than 150 people took place under sunny skies and a sprawling white tent on the grounds of the former Lamont family estate along the Hudson River. A live calypso band, a timeline showcasing CIESIN’s 10 years at Columbia, and remarks by Mike Purdy, director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Steve Zebiak, director general of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, were among the highlights of the event. CIESIN director Robert Chen and deputy director Marc Levy also reflected on the many collaborative activities that have developed with colleagues at the EI and the University more broadly.

Originally founded in 1989 as a non-profit organization based in Michigan, CIESIN moved to the Lamont campus in 1998 to become a center within the newly formed EI. As CIESIN’s longest-standing employee, Worrest has worked in Washington DC since 1992, supporting a number of US government activities including the US Global Change Research Program. Most recently, he served as chief scientist for the National Biological Information Infrastructure program of the US Geological Survey. Dr. Balstad became CIESIN’s second president in 1993 and served as CIESIN’s director at Columbia from 1998 to 2006. She is currently a Senior Fellow with CIESIN and co-principal investigator on two EI research projects.

See: Robert Worrest Bio
       Roberta Balstad Bio
       online guestbook

June 11, 2008

The User Working Group (UWG) of SEDAC, the NASA-supported Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, welcomes four new members with expertise in fields of atmospheric chemistry, demography, economics, political science, and public health:

• Marcia Castro, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard University
• Geoffrey Dabelko, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Denise Mauzerall, Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program, Princeton University
• Dean Yang, Department of Economics, University of Michigan

These individuals join a distinguished group of social and natural scientists and applied users from academic, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations. Chaired by Prof. Harlan Onsrud of the University of Maine, the UWG advises SEDAC on user needs for data and services, and strategic priorities.

See: SEDAC UWG

June 10, 2008

Interests in the areas of natural hazards, emerging diseases, spatial data on roads, climate change, and sustainable development in China have led ten students and recent graduates to join CIESIN for the summer. This international group brings expertise in geospatial analysis, public health, hazards, and data management to a variety of CIESIN and Earth Institute (EI) research and data development activities.

Steffen Foerster, a Phd candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Columbia University, is working on an international collaborative project to develop a new and improved global roads data set. Helping to document the wide range of research and educational activities dealing with China at the EI is Yun Zheng, a junior at Columbia majoring in earth and environmental engineering. Soh Young In, who recently graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in economics and statistics, is assisting in making more accessible new data on observed climate data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Faye Bi, who will graduate in 2010 with a major in anthropology, is participating in the development and updating of CIESIN’s poverty and population data.    

Contributing to various CIESIN projects in collaboration with the CHRR (Center for Hazards and Risk Research) are Miranda Mockrin, Chikara Onda, and Liana Razafindrazay. Mockrin, who recently earned her Phd in ecology and evolutionary biology from Columbia, is helping to model tsunami impacts in Asia in conjunction with the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute. Onda, a rising junior at Columbia majoring in environmental sciences and economics who was hosted by CIESIN last summer as part of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) Summer Intern Program, returns this summer to help analyze global-scale drought impacts, working with Brad Lyon of IRI. Razafindrazay, who has a masters in geography from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University and a masters in sustainable development from Centre d’Etude et de Recherche en Développement International (CERDI) in Clermont-Ferrand, is helping to update global earthquake risk data, working with LDEO’s Art Lerner-Lam.

CIESIN is again hosting an intern from the LDEO Intern program, Ariel Zucker, a rising senior studying economics at Columbia. Zucker, who previously worked for CIESIN on the development of an online mapping tool for ICAP (International Center for Aids Care and Treatment Programs), is researching antibiotic consumption for the global emerging diseases (EIDs) study under deputy director and associate director of the science division, Marc Levy. Another EI-supported intern, Greer Raggio, entering the second year of her masters in environmental health sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, is also contributing to this study, focusing on the relationship of climate change to EIDs.

June 6, 2008

The Summer Institute 2008: Climate Information for Public Health is being hosted by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) in partnership with CIESIN and the Mailman School of Public Health June 2-14, 2008 at Columbia’s Lamont campus. Twelve representatives from institutions involved in health care in developing countries, primarily in Africa, are participating in the hands-on training course, which teaches how to integrate local and regional climate information with population data to improve decision-making and enhance public health outcomes. “Developing a capacity for integrating climate information with socioeconomic data is vital,” notes CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy, “because climate’s impact on health is always mediated by social structures and human behavior.” Summer Institute participants are being taught to develop improved surveillance systems that make fuller use of climate information and geospatial analysis for epidemiological monitoring and risk assessment. Mark Becker, CIESIN associate director for Geospatial Applications, and Greg Yetman, geographic information specialist, number among the Institute instructors.

See:  Summer Institute 2008: Climate Information for Public Health

June 2, 2008

Technology and its effect on data stewardship throughout the data life cycle were the theme of the 2008 IASSIST (International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology) conference, for which CIESIN was again a gold sponsor. The conference, which took place at Stanford University May 27-30, was attended by CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert R. Downs. Downs was among a wide audience of professionals who work in and with information technology and data services to support research and teaching in the social sciences. He presented two papers. The first, “Assessing the Scientific Benefits of Interdisciplinary Use of Social Science Data through Citation Analysis,” was co-authored with CIESIN director Robert Chen, senior staff associate Joe Schumacher, and former CIESIN associate director W.Christopher Lenhardt. The second paper, co-authored by Chen and Downs, was “Implementing a Digital Repository for the Preservation of Interdisciplinary Data.”

See: 2008 IASSIST Conference

May 27, 2008

Map depicting estimated number of children, ages 5 to 14, who live in areas of relatively high earthquake risk.

A major concern highlighted in the recent earthquake in China is the poor construction of school buildings, leading to high mortality among school-age children. An article by Andrew Revkin published on May 27 in the Science Times section of The New York Times, “Turning Schools from Death Traps into Havens,” focused on the vulnerability of children in both developing and developed countries and on how relatively modest improvements in design and construction can mitigate this problem. Art Lerner-Lam, director of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR) at Columbia and an associate director with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), discussed the potential for an urban megadisaster in Eurasia. CIESIN provided estimates of school-age populations around the world living in high-risk earthquake zones. These estimates, developed by associate research scientist Susana Adamo and staff associate Maria Muniz based on CIESIN’s spatial population and hazards data, were presented in a map accompanying the article.

See: Online News Article
       Map

May 14, 2008

CNN’s Bonnie Schneider uses CIESIN’s population data and map to help describe Cyclone Nargis’s effect on population, May 7, 2008.

A map of population density in Myanmar based on CIESIN’s Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data set was featured prominently in a CNN newscast May 7 describing the path of Cyclone Nargis through the Irrawaddy Delta and the populations affected. Developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, the population density data were also provided directly to staff at the World Health Organization for use in planning humanitarian assistance. The data were shown again May 13 in a map of China in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ Online) that compared the location of the Sichuan province earthquakes and population centers in China. Both maps were accessed from the SEDAC Gridded Population of the World (GPW) Web site.

See: CNN Video Newscast (requires Flash)
       WSJ Online News Article/China Map
       GPW Web site     
 

May 2, 2008

Four views suggest the wide scope of data visualizations possible using the newly updated Terraviva! SEDAC Viewer.

The 2008 TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer has been updated with a wide range of new SEDAC data. This map viewer and standalone software application (Microsoft Windows-based) uses a powerful data-viewing engine and tools to enable the visualization and integration of hundreds of socioeconomic and environmental variables and layers, including a range of satellite-based data.

The update encompasses 51 ready-made maps, ten GeoData indicator collections with hundreds of variables, and other features—scatter plots, tabular data display, map image production, and Web-based download of additional data layers—that make the 2008 TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer such a valuable data exploration tool.

Produced in collaboration between ISciences and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, these data sets build on a collection that includes the flagship SEDAC data set, Gridded Population of the World (GPW), and others. The 2008 version adds the following SEDAC data collections:

•  The Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP)
•  Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis
•  Global Poverty Mapping
•  The Human Footprint and Last of the Wild, version two
•  The Population, Landscape, and Climate Estimates (PLACE II)
•  The Compendium of Environmental Sustainability Indicators

The software is free of charge.

See: TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer Order Form and Details

April 23, 2008

Mr. Takayuki Kawai (left), Robert Chen (center), and Dr. Yasushi Horikawa, following Dr. Horikawa's presentation April 21 at Lamont Campus, Palisades, New York.

Delegations from Japan and China were hosted recently by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. On April 21 two visitors from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) met with CIESIN staff and toured the Lamont Campus: Dr. Yasushi Horikawa, executive director, Office of Space Applications and Mr. Takayuki Kawai, deputy manager, SAPC. Dr. Horikawa made a presentation to CIESIN and Lamont researchers on the contribution of space-based Earth observations to the study of climate change. Discussions focused on Japan’s involvement in the planned Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), and on SEDAC’s progress in the areas of data interoperability and indicator development.

Delegation from China with CIESIN staff.

The following day, April 22, Cai Yunlong of Peking University and seven other geographers and social scientists from around China visited CIESIN. Prof. Cai, a vice president of the Geographical Society of China, gave an overview of the state of geographical research in China, including development of China’s spatial data infrastructure. Prof. Cai is also the dissertation advisor for visiting scientist Huang Qiuhao, and conducts research on land cover and land use change.

See: JAXA
       Geographical Society of China
       

April 20, 2008

Earth Institute director Jeffrey Sachs opened the 2008 Meeting of the AAG (Association of American Geographers) in Boston, April 15-19 with a stirring plenary speech to more than one thousand AAG participants on the importance of geographic perspectives and analysis in meeting the pressing problems of sustainable development. Named as an Honorary Geographer by the AAG in 2007, Prof. Sachs has championed the use of spatial data and analysis, including a variety of data from CIESIN, for more than a decade.

Another featured session at the AAG meeting was a panel on “Developing GIScience and Geographic Analysis Programs at Universities Which Do Not Have Geography Departments,” in which CIESIN director Robert Chen described CIESIN’s role in interdisciplinary geospatial research and data development at Columbia University. Columbia, which terminated its Geography Department in 1986, is one of several U.S. universities such as Harvard, Brown, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan that now have active research and education activities in GIScience and spatial analysis without formal Geography departments.

Elsewhere at the AAG meeting, CIESIN research associate Valentina Mara gave a paper on “Global Patterns of Urbanization vis-à-vis Ecosystems,” co-authored with former CIESIN research scientist Deborah Balk, in a session on Worldwide Urban Population Change. In addition, CIESIN user services manager Joe Schumacher helped staff the NASA Earth Science booth at the meeting, distributing outreach materials and interacting with meeting participants on behalf of the NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers. Attendance at the AAG meeting exceeded 7,000, a new record.

See: 2008 AAG

April 12, 2008

The intersection of security and environment issues was the focus of two talks given in Europe recently by CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy. In Athens April 9 Levy addressed an audience of forty military and diplomatic officials from the Middle East, South Asia, and neighboring countries on “Assessing Security Threats from Natural Disasters and Climate Change.” The presentation was part of a conference of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. In Geneva April 11 he gave a talk, “Measuring Environment-Security Linkages: The Evolution of the State of the Art,” held at the UN’s International Environment House (IEH). Levy was also part of extensive meetings with the UN Environment Programme Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch (PCDMB) to explore options for implementing a new collaborative arrangement with the Earth Institute at Columbia university.

See: Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies
       PCDMB

April 10, 2008

A workshop to further plan the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Biodiversity Observation Network (BON) was held in Berlin/Potsdam April 8–10 and attended by Alex de Sherbinin, deputy manager of SEDAC. GEO-BON is envisioned as an open-access data resource for the best available global biodiversity data, with accompanying tools and resources. Organized by DIVERSITAS, NASA, and the GEO Secretariat, the workshop was hosted and co-sponsored locally by BMBF (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany).The meeting included a mix of plenary sessions and working groups aimed at soliciting inputs from the wider biodiversity community and identifying the first action items of a plan.

It is anticipated that GEO-BON will be one element of GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, which aims to work with, and build upon, existing national, regional, and international systems to provide Earth observations as a resource for vital information for society. CIESIN is contributing actively to the development of GEOSS, in collaboration with NASA, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and the World Data Center (WDC) Panel of the International Council for Science, and other groups.

See: GEO-BON
       GEO

March 25, 2008

The creation and significance of subnational infant mortality data developed by CIESIN are the focus of a new article published in the journal Population, Space, and Place. Authored by former CIESIN staff Adam Storeygard and Deborah Balk, with CIESIN deputy director, Marc Levy, and Glenn Deane, “The Global Distribution of Infant Mortality: A Subnational Spatial View,” explains how subnational measures of infant mortality can serve as a useful, spatially-precise indicator of poverty. Prior to the production of this data set, global poverty measures had been available only at the national level; increased spatial precision at the subnational level is especially helpful when examining interactions between poverty and factors that do not conform to national borders, such as climate zones, eco-regions, and natural hazard exposure. The article describes how the data set was produced, delineates its known strengths and weaknesses, and reports some spatial patterns that emerge, such as the relationship between coastal proximity and poverty rates. The subnational poverty data set was produced in 2004-2005 as a part of The Global Distribution of Poverty project, a joint effort of the World Bank, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. The data set has been used in a number of global assessment exercises, including the UN Millennium Development Project and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

See: The Global Distribution of Infant Mortality (subscription only)
       The Global Distribution of Poverty Web site

March 20, 2008

Marc Levy, CIESIN deputy director, is part of a 15-member consortium that was recently awarded a grant from the United Kingdom-based Leverhulme Trust to create an international network on Transnational Climate Change Governance. The network will spend the next two and a-half years identifying patterns of transnational governance arrangements for climate change, developing a methodology for evaluating their significance, and conducting empirical research to explain variation in functions and effectiveness. The network will promote the creation of a research community built around a common database of transnational governance arrangements; technologies for sharing ideas, papers and information; and a series of workshops and conferences. The work will be integrated into ongoing debates on post-2012 climate change policy. The lead investigator for the consortium is Harriet Bulkeley, lecturer in the Durham University (UK) Department of Geography.

Data available for download include the Human Influence Index, the Human Footprint, and the Last of the Wild data sets.

See: Last of the Wild/Human Footprint

March 3, 2008

CIESIN-hosted meeting with Chinese visitors February 29. Left to right: Mark Becker, associate director, CIESIN Geospatial Applications Division; Zhao De'an, vice president of Northwest University for Nationalities; Xiaoshi Xing, CIESIN information scientist.

A delegation of nine Chinese academics from the Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou, People’s Republic of China, visited CIESIN on Friday, February 29. The group, headed by Zhao De’an, vice president of the university, included faculty from computer and information sciences, chemical engineering, biotechnology, geology, Islamic culture, fine arts, and gesarology (the study of the oral epic of the first Tibetan king, Gesar.) In his overview of the university activities, Prof. Zhao highlighted research on landslides and earthquakes, air pollution due to dust and industrial contaminants, respiratory diseases, hazard and risk modeling, and innovative information technology. The group discussed potential areas of collaboration with researchers from CIESIN, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Later in the day on the Morningside campus, Prof. Lan Quejia, a well-known Tibetan scholar and member of the Northwest faculty, presented a seminar on the King Gesar epic.

As a minority institution of higher learning—one of six  in China—Northwest University was established in 1950 as part of a nationwide move to encourage minority participation in the university system. Recently, the university established the West China Institute of Environment and Health to serve as a focal point for research and education on environment and health issues in western China.

February 28, 2008

The University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, was the site of two international meetings held this week, in which CIESIN director Robert Chen and geographic information specialist Greg Yetman participated actively.

The Tenth International Conference for Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI-10) attracted experts on geospatial data, tools, and systems from around the world. Yetman, who is a member of the GSDI Association Board, led a workshop on the assessment of infrastructure and population in the low-elevation coastal zone and later gave a talk on CIESIN’s work on coastal vulnerability to sea level rise. As co-chair of the GSDI technical committee, he ran a session with Doug Nebert of the Federal Geographic Data Committee on updates to the Spatial Data Infrastructure Cookbook. He also attended the GSDI Association pre-conference board and council meetings, where activities for the coming year were planned and a new president and board members were elected. Chen presented a paper co-authored with Paul Uhlir of the U.S. National Research Council on development of proposed guidelines for implementing the data sharing principles of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). A workshop on poverty mapping featuring poverty data from CIESIN’s Global Poverty Mapping Project was also presented by researchers from the University of the West Indies.

In conjunction with GSDI-10, the Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis (TGICA) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held its 14th meeting February 26–28. The meeting focused on interdisciplinary data integration and access needs for the broad scientific and policy communities concerned with climate change. The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), operated by CIESIN under contract to NASA, works with groups in the United Kingdom and Germany to provide access to data and scenarios used in the IPCC assessments. On February 28, Chen co-chaired a joint GSDI-TGICA session that addressed the spatial aspects of climate change vulnerability, impacts, adaptation, and mitigation.

See: GSDI
       TGICA
       IPCC Data Distribution Centre

Merging population characteristics with characteristics of climate, ecology, and place is one of the most challenging aspects of the integration of census and non-census data, according to CIESIN associate research scientist and demographer Susana Adamo. Issues related to this challenge were the basis for a presentation Adamo gave to the IPUMS International Workshop, “Global Integration of Population Microdata: Challenge for the 2010 Round,” held February 23 at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. The presentation, “Synergies of a Global Microdata Collaboratory: Climate and Ecology,” examined these issues in the context of the evolution of several of CIESIN’s major global population data products—Gridded Population of the World (GPW v3), GRUMP, and the Low-Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) data based on GRUMP. Adamo focused on how to use this kind of data integration to address significant global issues, in particular, climate change.

See: Climate and Ecology Presentation

Zoonotic pathogens passed from wildlife to humans, showing lowest occurrence (green) to highest (red). Credit: Nature.

A new study appearing in the Feb. 21 issue of Nature presents the first scientific evidence that emerging diseases are on the rise and that zoonoses—diseases from wildlife—are the prime threat, due to encroachment of wild areas by human population growth and related impacts. CIESIN’s deputy director Marc Levy is a co-author of the study, “Global Trends in Emerging Infectious Diseases,” which built a predictive model by correlating population data from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN with analysis of emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004. “Overlaying maps of where the zoonotic diseases have occurred, with population maps, allows a pattern of relationships to emerge,” says Levy, “and is a first step in prediction.” The result is a global map of emerging disease “hotspots” that shows a pattern of growing vulnerability to new diseases in rich as well as poor nations, with implications for further prediction and prevention. The study also offers insights into the role of conservation in preventing new diseases and the importance of reviewing approaches to allocation of public health resources in order to reduce risk.

In addition to Levy and former CIESIN colleagues Deborah Balk and Adam Storeygard, now at Baruch College, CUNY and Brown University, respectively, the international research team included scientists from the Consortium Conservation Medicine (CCM) Wildlife Trust New York; The University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology; and The Institute of Zoology at The Zoological Society of London, where lead author of the study and former Earth Institute fellow Kate Jones is now senior fellow. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

See: Nature article (subscription-only)
       NPR Interview:“Study Finds Emerging Diseases on Rise”
       Press release
      

January 30, 2008

CIESIN’s Global Poverty Mapping Project received high praise in the January 11 online issue of the Internet Scout Report. “A well-designed site…which can be used in a variety of settings,” the Global Distribution of Poverty Web site is noted for its collection of more than 300 maps documenting the geographic and biophysical conditions facing the poor. Users are encouraged to download the subnational and national poverty data sets available on the site and to explore Where the Poor Are: An Atlas of Poverty, an accessible publication of poverty maps and case histories that shows how poverty mapping data can be used to guide poverty interventions.

The Internet Scout Report is a weekly Web service which identifies valuable online resources, according to criteria developed by a team of professional librarians. It was established in 1994 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

See: Internet Scout Report   
    

January 28, 2008

CIESIN senior staff associate Alex de Sherbinin attended a meeting of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Knowledge Management: Land Initiative from January 21–23 in Bonn, Germany and made a presentation on land degradation indicators. CIESIN is working with the GEF to develop global spatial indicators that will help to better allocate GEF resources in the land degradation portfolio; and to assess where land degradation processes are improving or worsening. While in Germany, he made a second presentation to the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) in Frankfurt, describing the methods and results of the recently-released 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI). De Sherbinin is a co-author of the EPI along with Marc Levy and Valentina Mara of CIESIN and colleagues at Yale University.

See: KM: Land Initiative

January 23, 2008

The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was the venue for the release today of the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), co-authored by CIESIN and Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy. Last released in 2006, the EPI ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators across six policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change. Each indicator in the EPI measures how close each country comes to broadly-accepted targets, on a 0–100 scale. As a quantitative gauge of environmental outcomes, the Index is meant to provide a powerful tool for improving policymaking by shifting environmental decisionmaking onto firmer analytic foundations.

The 2008 EPI ranks Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Costa Rica as the top five overall countries. Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Niger occupy the bottom five positions. The U.S. is ranked 39th, lower than most industrial countries.

The Index also provides “peer group” rankings for each country, comparing performance of countries facing similar environmental challenges. These benchmarks allow easy tracking of leaders and laggards on an issue-by-issue and aggregate basis. The data also support efforts to identify “best practices” in the environmental realm.

See: 2008 Environmental Performance Index Web site

January 16, 2008

CIESIN director Robert Chen joined a meeting led by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) at the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-ROAP) in Bangkok on January 14–15. The focus of the meeting was to refine plans and outcomes for the Asian risk assessment study recently launched by NGI with support from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. The team meeting included staff from OCHA and other UN offices in Bangkok and researchers from the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), the University of Geneva, and the Pacific Disaster Center. Columbia University scientists are providing expertise and assistance on seismic and drought hazards, population exposure, vulnerability assessment, conflict mapping, and data integration.