35 Years of Harnessing the Power of Geospatial Data for Decision-Making – The State of the Planet

The Climate School’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is celebrating 35 years since its founding as an independent nonprofit organization in 1989 and 25 years based at Columbia University. These anniversaries come with another milestone: a new name. Starting today, CIESIN will Earth Integrated Information Center.

CIESIN’s mission is to help people easily access and use complex environmental, social, and economic data to make better decisions about pressing issues such as climate change, disaster response, and sustainable development. It is to do.

“This name change better captures our core strength: an integrated view of the entire Earth system, including not only the environmental system but also the socio-economic system,” said the recently appointed CIESIN director. said. Alex De Cherbinin.

Since its founding, CIESIN has transformed the way the world thinks about using geospatial and other data science approaches for pressing multidisciplinary problems such as climate change, pandemics, conflict, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development. I did.

Founded as a nonprofit consortium based in Michigan, CIESIN was founded at a time when the Internet was just beginning to develop and new geographic information system (GIS) software and data were emerging as tools for visualizing and analyzing environmental issues. Sometimes I “grew up.”

In 1998, CIESIN became a center within Columbia University’s Earth Institute and moved to the university’s Lamont campus, where it remains today as part of the Columbia Climate School.

“At the time, there was recognition that science was producing valuable data, but relatively few people had the expertise and ability to find, access, analyze and use it,” CIESIN said. said Robert Chen, who served as director for many years and retired last year. . “Our mission was to unlock the potential of geospatial data for decision-making.”

The world’s first gridded population

One of CIESIN’s first breakthroughs occurred in 1994, when the world’s grid population (GPW) is a dataset that maps population distribution around the world in a consistent way to a uniform grid scale.

GPW is one of the earliest and most widely used datasets in GIS. This has led to more accurate studies of population density, distribution, and dynamics around the world.

“Before GPW, population data was typically organized by administrative units, such as countries, states, or districts. This made it difficult to analyze population patterns in a spatially continuous manner. ” said De Cherbinin.

By representing all this data on a grid, GPW now allows scientists to compare and analyze population distribution across different regions without being constrained by political boundaries. This is critical when studying transnational phenomena such as climate change, disease spread, and biodiversity patterns.

“Suppose you want to assess the number of vulnerable people living in flood-prone areas of the Mississippi Valley, which do not perfectly align with national or municipal boundaries,” de Cherbinin said. spoke. “Trying to analyze using administrative units is a very clumsy task. However, using gridded datasets like GPW makes geospatial operations much simpler and reduces the amount of time and computation required. The data can also be easily integrated with remote sensing, climate, and other terrestrial data provided in grid format.”

As such, GPW contributed to the mainstream adoption of GIS in environmental science, urban planning, public health, and other fields.

This dataset is still used today, among other things, to support United Nations operations. sustainable development goals Provides detailed population data to track demographics, urbanization, and resource allocation critical to achieving sustainable development.

Storing and providing access to geoscience data

Shortly after relocating to Colombia, CIESIN established its longest-running project, the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (Sedak).

SEDAC houses an extensive archive of social, economic, and environmental data. These include demographic trends and population projections, land use, land cover, air quality, disaster risk, and more.

“It will act as a bridge between the scientific and policy communities, providing a valuable dataset to help researchers and decision makers analyze human-environment interactions and the impacts of global change. ” said De Cherbinin.

Over the ensuing decades, CIESIN has leveraged these innovations in spatial, demographic, and socio-economic data and mapping to lead numerous projects with important policy implications.

“for example, environmental performance indicatorsIt is clear that our collaboration with Yale University has brought about changes in environmental policy and resource management in various countries,” Chen said. EPI ranks countries on sustainability based on 58 performance indicators.

Another project in progress Mapping natural disaster hotspotswhich helped justify the World Bank’s creation of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery in 2006.

CIESIN’s other funders include various United Nations agencies, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Energy, and many other state and federal agencies (see References). here (See here for a list of major projects).

“All the data we produce through external funding will also be distributed through SEDAC, making it a public good for further scientific analysis,” de Cherbinin said.

Addressing the geospatial data gap in developing countries

Perhaps no other project demonstrates CIESIN’s ability to put its core strengths into practice. grid 3 project.

GRID3 stands for Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development, and it addresses a long-standing and vexing problem facing humanitarian and development-focused agencies in Africa: accurate, up-to-date regionalized population data. and addressed the lack of infrastructure data.

“Without this information, effective planning, decision-making and emergency response cannot take place,” de Cherbinin said. “In low-income countries, a large proportion of the population lives in unnamed settlements of unknown population size. These may appear on satellite images, but are not named on maps. It is essentially invisible for planning purposes such as education, clinics, and vaccination campaigns.”

So GRID3, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, the World Health Organization and others, uses satellite imagery, census information and field surveys to fill these critical geographic data gaps. I filled it.

The datasets GRID3 helped create are: polio eradication In Nigeria, Provision of medical services In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Distribution of voting stations Also in Zambia etc.

Due to its success, GRID3 is now an independent non-profit organization run by Marc Levy, former vice president of CIESIN. CIESIN continues to provide technical support for GRID3.

Introducing geographic thinking into climate school

CIESIN has a unique role as part of the Climate School and for Colombia as a whole, de Cherbinin said. “This is not just the GIS and spatial analysis toolkit that we are known for, but also the integrative capabilities that we have. They tend to be the glue of projects…exactly the kinds of problems that climate schools want to address.”

The Center’s recent projects on climate change, climate justice, solar desalination plant siting, and managed retreats demonstrate close alignment with the Climate School’s mission.

Poor and vulnerable people are affected in different ways and require specific forms of support in terms of migration or adaptation. So all these concerns basically come down to very place-specific needs, aligned with the actual impacts of climate on society.

CIESIN scientists currently teach at both climate schools. MSc in Climate and Society Not only the program Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Developmentwhere they are part of an innovative course that works with local environmental justice organizations to solve local problems through a geospatial approach. CIESIN will also contribute to new initiatives. MSc in ClimateAdvanced Certificate in Climate Systems and Analysis.

“The goal is to develop a broader set of courses that cover themes such as open and participatory science, co-production of knowledge, and data for decision-making,” de Cherbinin said.