Resources »  News

CIESIN experts helped to celebrate GIS Day as part of several events held virtually on November 18. For a “Lunch and Learn” Webinar organized by NASA and Esri, Greg Yetman, associate director for Geospatial Applications, gave a 10-minute talk on how geographic information systems (GIS) facilitates the integration of socioeconomic and biophysical data to support interdisciplinary research and applications. He noted CIESIN’s long history in developing gridded population data products, extending back more than 25 years when GIS software was still in its infancy.

Later in the day, CIESIN and the New York City (NYC) Geospatial Information System and Mapping Organization (GISMO) held the online event, “Discover the World Through GIS in NYC.” The event featured presentations by students and researchers from CIESIN and Columbia University, Lehman College of the City University of New York, and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Nearly 80 people from around the world learned about efforts to map the movement of refugees and COVID-19; plan for disaster housing; evaluate bike paths in the Bronx; implement interactive mapping in the NYCHA; and prioritize tiger habitats in India’s wildlife corridors. The event was hosted by senior geographic information specialist Dara Mendeloff, in coordination with senior geographic information specialist Tricia Chai-Onn. Mendeloff is a member of the Board of Directors of GISMO, a volunteer organization founded in 1990.

CIESIN has recently released the preliminary 2020 version of the Natural Resource Protection and Child Health Indicators (NRPI and CHI) in support of the country selection process conducted by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The MCC bases its selection criteria for foreign assistance on a variety of quantitative governance, social, economic, and environmental indicators, including the NRPI and CHI. The USAID has also begun utilizing the CHI in 2020 to chart progress on the Journey to Self-Reliance, an initiative that fosters sustained self-reliance on the part of developing countries. The NRPI assesses whether a country is protecting at least 17% of all of its biomes (e.g., forests, grasslands, aquatic ecosystems, and tundra). The CHI incorporates three underlying indicators—Access to At Least Basic Sanitation, Access to At Least Basic Water, and Child Mortality, ages 1–4—and serves a useful proxy for key environmental conditions.

The 2020 version of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and CIESIN, has also been released. The EPI ranks 180 countries in two major components, environmental health and ecosystem vitality, based on 32 indicators. Produced every two years since 2006, the EPI is archived and disseminated by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN. The 2020 release includes a report, data sets for download, and an extensive map gallery of nearly 100 maps visualizing changes in performance over more than two decades.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs participated in the 16th Plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA P16) held virtually November 9–12. The meeting, which was organized by CONARE Costa Rica, RDA United States, and Research Data Canada, had the theme, “Knowledge Ecology,” focusing on how open science can support the diversification, expansion, reuse, and constant creation of knowledge, as in healthy ecological systems. On November 9, Downs led the joint breakout session of the Repository Platforms for Research Data Interest Group (IG) and the Domain Repositories IG, “Approaches for Selecting Research Data Repository Platforms and Sharing Resources to Facilitate Open Science.″ During this session, he gave two presentations, “Selecting Research Data Repository Platforms for Open Science,” and “Opportunities for Sharing Resources among Research Data Repositories.” Downs also presented the poster, “Simultaneously Leveraging Principles to Improve Capabilities for Using Research Data,” as part of the P16 poster session. Recordings from RDA P16 are now available online to meeting registrants.

The RDA was established in 2013 as an international community of data experts and users. It now has more than 10,000 members from more than 145 countries.

CIESIN has developed a collaboration with the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geospatial Sciences at Lehman College of the City University of New York to develop and enhance hazards data, working initially with five Lehman graduate and undergraduate students. Supervised by CIESIN alumnus Yuri Gorokhovich, associate professor in the Department, the students are Christopher Aime, Diana Calderón, Nira Rahman, and Raychell Velez from Lehman's Master′s program in Geographic Information Science; and Hadja Doumbouya, a senior majoring in environmental sciences. CIESIN associate director for Geospatial Applications Greg Yetman is assisting the students in using machine learning methods to develop improved data on the exposure and vulnerability of buildings and other infrastructure to hazards, extending recent work for the State of New York supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). Carolynne Hultquist, CIESIN postdoctoral research scientist, and Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior staff associate at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), are also working with the students to apply the data to flash flood hazard assessment.

The collaboration is supported by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) as part of SEDAC's efforts to achieve small business purchasing goals established by NASA, which include collaboration with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Outputs of the collaboration will be made available via SEDAC after appropriate review. Based in the Bronx, Lehman is one of the only MSIs (or HBCU′s) in the US to offer a master of science degree in geographic information science.

On Thursday, November 19, because of required maintenance on the NASA user registration system, visitors to the SEDAC Web site will not be able to create a new account or download data from SEDAC for a brief period between 10 a.m. and 12 noon Eastern Standard Time (EST) (UTC-05:00). Users will still be able to browse the Web site and use the SEDAC map tools and services. The Web site will be fully operational following this time period. Please note that this maintenance has been rescheduled from November 4. For any questions or concerns, please contact SEDAC User Services at ciesin.info@ciesin.columbia.edu.

The Global COVID-19 Viewer developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN was the subject of the first NASA Earthdata Webinar of fiscal year 2021, “SEDAC’s Global COVID-19 Viewer: A User-Friendly Tool for Assessing National and Subnational Trends and Risk Factors in Coronavirus Spread.” The October 28 webinar was given by Alex de Sherbinin, SEDAC deputy manager and CIESIN associate director for Science Applications, and Joe Schumacher, SEDAC user services manager and CIESIN senior information specialist. Approximately 110 participants learned about the development of the Viewer, launched in March 2020 and updated most recently in September. The Webinar included a live demonstration of the Viewer, which lets users visualize spatially-explicit trends in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates, including daily updated global data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in relationship to population density and key risk factors. The demo focused on current hotspots, interesting trends, and an exploration of risk factors.

On November 2, Jolynn Schmidt, program manager-data lead for the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program managed by CIESIN, participated in a workshop at the 7th 2020 GeONG Forum, a virtual gathering of international humanitarian and development organizations. The workshop focused on different approaches and lessons learned in defining health catchment areas and assessing the number of people in them, which is important for estimating the potential number of patients and demand on health facilities. Schmidt presented her experience working to strengthen developing countries’ capabilities for mapping population distribution, human settlements, and other core spatial data layers.

Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Science Applications, recently published the feature article, “Impacts of Climate Change as Drivers of Migration,” in Migration Information Source, the online journal of the Migration Policy Institute. The article reviews the growing evidence base for environmentally induced migration, summarizes key lessons learned, and assesses implications for future migration under climate change.

Climate-migration linkages have also been the focus of a number of recent events. On October 21, de Sherbinin gave a presentation, “Climate Change and Its Impacts on (Well Being), Migration, and Displacement,” to the Virtual Global Climate Change Seminar Series of the Weill Cornell Medicine Global Health Education program. He also moderated a virtual panel, “Climate, Conflict, and Coronavirus: A Perfect Storm for Migrants and Displaced Persons,” October 22. Panelists included Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness; Kamal Amakrane, director in the Office of the President of the 71st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA); and Leslie Roberts, associate professor of Population and Family Health and a member of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia′s Mailman School of Public Health. This was one of a series of panels organized by the Committee on Forced Migration, an initiative of the Columbia Global Centers.

CIESIN director Robert Chen presented approaches to open data access by the Earth observations and research communities during an online stakeholder consultation organized October 21 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Conclusions and recommendations from the session are being submitted as inputs to the WMO Data Conference, to be held virtually November 16–19. The WMO Data Conference is seeking to develop a common understanding across all sectors of society on the roles, requirements, and arrangements needed for international exchange of observations and other data for monitoring and prediction of the Earth System environment, including weather, climate, and water.

The 2020 United Nations (UN) World Data Forum was held virtually October 19–21, in place of a physical meeting in Bern, Switzerland, that has been postponed to 2021. The Forum serves as a platform for intensifying cooperation on sustainable development data across a diverse set of communities, under the auspices of the UN Statistical Commission.

Several CIESIN staff participated actively in the Forum. On October 20, Sandra Baptista, senior research associate, and Andrea Jordan, special assistant to the deputy director, both representing the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program, co-organized the live panel, “Use of Geospatial Data to Support COVID-19 Response,” with Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). The panel was moderated by Io Blair-Freese of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and included two partners in the GRID3 program: Prince Clem Ikanade Agba, minister of state for budget and national planning of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and co-chair of GRID3′s Nigeria national steering committee; and David Moinina Sengeh, minister of basic and senior secondary education and chief innovation officer for the Government of Sierra Leone.

The Forum also included a number of pre-recorded sessions. NASA, UN-Habitat, the European Space Agency, and the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) organized a session on the use of Earth observations to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. CIESIN Director Robert Chen co-authored a short presentation with Thomas Kemper of the European Commission′s Joint Research Centre on behalf of the GEO Human Planet Initiative, which he co-leads. They also participated in a pre-recorded question-and-answer session.

Recordings of Forum sessions are now available online. The UN World Data Forum was originally established in response to a key recommendation in the 2014 report, “A World that Counts: Mobilising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development,″ prepared by the UN Secretary-General′s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.

CIESIN has developed and released several new data sets recently. Now available from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) is the Food Insecurity Hotspots data set, which consists of gridded data identifying the level of intensity and frequency of food insecurity over ten years between 2009 and 2019, as well as hotspots of consecutive food insecurity events. The data set covers five regions: Central America and the Caribbean, Central Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. The grids are at 250 meter (~7.2 arc-seconds) resolution and are based on subnational food security analyses for these regions provided by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). FEWS NET was established in 1985 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

As part of the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program managed by CIESIN, data on operational settlement points and/or boundaries, health facilities, and points of interests have been released for Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Settlement extent data are now available for 41 African countries, created from Digitize Africa building footprints powered by Maxar. GRID3 has expedited settlement extent mapping to support countries in their COVID-19 response efforts. The data are broadly intended to support country decision-making in public health and education.

The World Data System (WDS) of the International Science Council (ISC) held its 2020 Members Forum online on September 23. CIESIN associate director of Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin, in his capacity as chair of the WDS Scientific Committee, helped organize and chair the Forum and gave a presentation on the issue of generalist versus domain-specific repositories. CIESIN director Robert Chen chaired a panel session, “Sustainability: Making the Case for Domain Repositories through Value of Information, Operational Use, and Web Services.” As manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), which is a regular member of WDS, Chen also pre-recorded a lightning presentation on SEDAC′s strategic goals and plans. Other Forum participants included senior digital archivist Robert Downs and research scientist Susana Adamo, as well as representatives from several other NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and from NASA′s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project, which is a network member of the WDS.

In conjunction with the Forum, the International Symposium: Global Collaboration on Data Beyond Disciplines was held September 23–25. A plenary session to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the hosting of the WDS International Programme Office (WDS-IPO) by the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) included pre-recorded remarks given by de Sherbinin on behalf of the WDS Scientific Committee.

CIESIN remains active in several different WDS activities. For example, Downs is a member of the WDS Harvestable Metadata Services (HMetS) Working Group and de Sherbinin co-leads the joint CODATA-WDS Citizen Science for the SDGs Task Group. He also chaired the virtual meeting of the WDS Scientific Committee on October 13–15.

Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN associate director for Science Applications, Susana Adamo, research scientist, and Tricia Chai-Onn, senior geographic information specialist, are co-authors of a new study on the link between environmental challenges and religion, published in the Journal of Religion and Demography. Vegard Skirbekk of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health is lead author. The paper, “Religious Affiliation and Environmental Challenges in the 21st Century,” builds on a growing body of research carried out at the Columbia Aging Center, where researchers analyzed religious affiliation together with a variety of environment and climate change-related indicators at the country level.

The Global COVID-19 Viewer map from September 25 shows the prevalence of COVID-19 cases, defined as the total number of cases per 100,000 people, for the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico since early in the pandemic.

The latest update to the Global COVID-19 Viewer: Population Estimates by Age Group and Sex features enhanced capabilities for visualizing the status and reach of the pandemic around the world, daily and over time since its beginning, and to identify at-risk populations. A pop-up trends graph illustrates daily and 7-day moving averages of COVID-19 cases and deaths for a range of select time scales—one month, three months, six months, and beyond. The graph may be accessed by simply clicking on a country. User-friendly mapping tools let users define a custom area or fly to a location of interest. Users may also easily move up or down administrative levels in many countries and view demographic and urbanization estimates relevant to possible risk factors for the virus. The Viewer was developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN. The underlying population data are from SEDAC′s Gridded Population of the World (GPW) Basic Demographic Characteristics, v4.11, for the year 2010, with estimates to 2020. The COVID-19 data are from Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center. 

During August and September, CIESIN scientists contributed to numerous online meetings and Webinars focused on diverse issues related to citizen science data, data quality and stewardship, geospatial data development and applications, and climate migration modeling and data.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs gave the presentation, “Improving Data Stewardship Based on the TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories,” at the #WeMissiPRES virtual meeting on 23 September. The annual International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was replaced by a virtual event consisting of three half-day sessions September 22–24. Downs′ presentation focused on the ongoing implementation of the TRUST Principles (transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability, and technology) at the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. Downs also presented, “NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC): Current Status, Road Map and Challenges,″ during a virtual meeting of the World Data System (WDS) Harvestable Metadata Services (HMetS) Working Group on September 9.

Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Science Applications, gave the talk, “Data for the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa: The role of citizen-generated data,” at a Technical Validation Workshop on September 16 for the project, Standardizing City-Level Data-Gathering for Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11 in Africa (SCiLeD). On 14 September, he also served as a panelist during the 2020 Global Shifts Colloquium, organized by the Perry World House at the University Pennsylvania, where he presented work on climate migration modeling and data sources. 

August 26–27 and September 4, CIESIN participated as an observer organization in the virtual Tenth Session of the United Nations Group of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). CIESIN′s delegation was led by director Robert Chen. The UN-GGIM promotes international collaboration on geospatial  data and information and reports on all matters relating to geography, geospatial information, and related topics to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). CIESIN has been a non-governmental organization with special consultative status recognized by ECOSOC since 1995.

At the 2020 Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Summer Meeting Highlights Webinar on August 13, Robert Downs gave a lightning talk summarizing the ESIP Information Quality Cluster session, “Citizen Science and Data Quality.” The Webinar provided an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the Summer Meeting, and is available for viewing on YouTube.

Users of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) are invited to participate in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey for the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). This annual survey assesses user satisfaction with the data, tools, and support provided by EOSDIS data centers and services. SEDAC, which serves a wide range of basic and applied users interested in the integration of remote sensing and socioeconomic data, is one of the data centers evaluated by the survey. Survey results enable SEDAC to address problems, improve data and services, and identify high priority user needs and concerns. It also helps justify NASA′s continuing investment in EOSDIS data services and support.

All SEDAC users are encouraged to participate in the survey by early October. Users with an Earthdata user name registered with SEDAC will receive an e-mail invitation from the CFI Group on behalf of NASA, requesting participation in the brief survey (10–15 minutes to complete). The identity of respondents is not shared with SEDAC or NASA.

Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Science Applications, is guest editor of a special Issue of the journal Sustainability on climate risk and vulnerability mapping, with co-editor Stefan Kienberger of the University of Salzburg. He is also a co-author of one of the papers in the special issue, on using flood disaster data to validate components of social vulnerability to floods. The paper’s lead author is Earth Institute Fellow Beth Tellman.

The article, “Still in Need of Norms: The State of the Data in Citizen Science,″ has been published in the journal Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. Anne Bowser of the Wilson Center is lead author, and de Sherbinin is a co-author. The article is a major output of the CODATA-World Data System (WDS) Task Group on Citizen Science and the Validation, Curation, and Management of Crowdsourced Data, which de Sherbinin co-chaired in 2016-2018.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs is a co-author of the report, “Laying the Groundwork for Developing International Community Guidelines to Effectively Share and Reuse Digital Data Quality Information—Case Statement, Workshop Summary Report, and Path Forward,” published in Open Science Foundation (OSF) Preprints. Ge Peng of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Information Quality Cluster is lead author. The report, which stems from a pre-workshop held in July 2020 prior to the ESIP Summer Meeting, describes the approach that will be taken to develop community guidelines for preparing and sharing data quality information.

The Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program managed by CIESIN has released the white paper, “Harmonizing Subnational Boundaries,” on GRID3 efforts to support the harmonization, production, and use of digitized legal/administrative units, operational units, and statistical areas. This work addresses three primary areas: improving and harmonizing operational units; fostering improved collaboration on boundary harmonization among disparate government bodies; and using boundaries harmonization to support census efforts. The paper focuses on case studies in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia.

NASA recently published an article on its Earthdata web site about the continued flow of NASA Earth science data during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The article describes how the overall Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) was able to continue processing and distributing many terabytes of data each month even though NASA centers had closed and almost all staff had to shift to remote work. The article also highlights how two of the twelve NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs)—the Alaska Satellite Facility DAAC operated by the University of Alaska, and the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN—have adapted to the changing work environment. CIESIN director Robert Chen, who has served as SEDAC's manager for more than 20 years, noted that this is not the first time that SEDAC has faced major disruptions (9/11 in 2001 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012). Among other efforts, SEDAC has worked to increase virtualization of its systems to strengthen flexibility and reliability.

NASA recently exercised another option year in CIESIN's contract to continue operating SEDAC (through July 2021). CIESIN received an “exceptional″ performance rating from NASA for the option year that ended in July 2020. 

Cascade Tuholske has joined CIESIN for a two-year appointment as an Earth Institute postdoctoral research scientist. Tuholske is a geographer specializing in the integration of global-scale human and environment geospatial data to examine the relationship between urbanization and climate change. At CIESIN, he has begun working with director Robert Chen and associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin to construct a globally extensive, longitudinal, and fine-scale synthesis of extreme heat events, urban population growth, and the urban heat island effect. His goal is to inform adaptation strategies that reduce the harmful and inequitable impacts of urban exposure to extreme heat. He will also contribute to another NASA-funded project on the use of gridded population and settlement datasets to assess progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Tuholske received his PhD in geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he focused on the nexus of climate change, urbanization, and food security in Africa under the guidance of Prof. Kelly Caylor.

The Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) has released several online training modules in English and Spanish on the fundamentals of spatial data integration, geared towards demographers and other population researchers. Developed by Susana Adamo, CIESIN research scientist, and Professor Landy Sanchez of the Center for Demographic, Urban, and Environmental Studies at El Colegio de Mexico (COLMEX), the video-based tutorials draw on pre-packaged data and open source geographic information system (GIS) and Web-based tools. The goals of the online training are to review the fundamentals of spatial data integration, with an emphasis on remote sensing; present an overview of relevant datasets and services (platforms and tools); develop basic skills for linking demographic and environmental data; and expand the use of specialized data sources. Production was supported by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. PERN is a scientific panel of IUSSP and a sustained partner of Future Earth, and is hosted by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN. Adamo is co-coordinator of PERN and SEDAC′s lead project scientist; Sanchez is former chair of the PERN Scientific Committee.

Former CIESIN scientist Deborah Balk has assumed the directorship of the Institute for Demographic Research (IDR) at the City University of New York (CUNY). She had served as IDR′s associate director since 2006. Balk is also professor of public affairs at the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College. She serves on several noteworthy committees, including the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Population, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee, and the New York City Panel on Climate Change, for which she is a co-chair. She was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow 2016–2018. Her research focus is urbanization in the developing world, using a spatial framework to explore the demographic implications of climate-change issues. Balk is currently working with Kytt MacManus, senior systems analyst/GIS developer at CIESIN, and with Gordon McGranahan of the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom, on updates to the low-elevation coastal zone estimates developed in a 2007 study. She was lead project scientist for the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN from 1998 to 2006, spearheading the development of many widely-used population-related data products and services. She later served as a member of SEDAC′s User Working Group (UWG) 2015–2018.

Established in 2011, the World Wide Human Geography Data (WWHGD) Working Group provides a platform for the discussion of human geography issues and sharing of human geography data. In recognition of its long track record of conferences and webinars, the WWHGD organized a 50^th Retrospective Symposium on the topic of planetary health, an all-day online event on July 29 that brought together many of the experts who had presented at one or more prior WWHGD events. CIESIN associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin was invited to speak about climate and human geography in the session, “A Conversation on Environmental Change Impacts.” CIESIN director Robert Chen participated in the closing panel on strategic human geography perspectives and solutions for future challenges. The Symposium highlighted a diverse set of data and information resources related to human security and planetary health, including a number of data sets and tools provided by CIESIN through the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and other CIESIN projects. Co-led by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the US Department of State, the WWHGD Working Group has nearly 5,000 members spread across more than 150 countries.