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The 2020 Summer Meeting of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) was held virtually July 14–24, rather than in Burlington, Vermont, as originally planned. The meeting theme was “Putting Data to Work: Building Public-Private Partnerships to Increase Resilience & Enhance the Socioeconomic Value of Data.” In line with the theme, CIESIN collaborated with ISciences LLC, CASE Consultants international, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to organize two linked sessions July 23 on open source environment-security analytics. The first session featured talks by CIESIN alumnus Tom Parris, president of ISciences; Mark Wahl of the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC); and CIESIN director Robert Chen. Chen highlighted numerous public-private partnerships involving CIESIN over more than two decades, including diverse initiatives dealing with environment-security crises, disaster risk management, climate change, and population data. In the second session, senior systems analyst/GIS developer Kytt MacManus led a hands-on subgroup, “Employing Python and R for Explorations of Gridded Demographic Data using Web Services.” Other technical subgroups were led by ISciences and ERDC staff, building in part on a USACE-funded Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) project to develop Data ANalytics and Tools for Ecosecurity (DANTE).

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs was also very active in the ESIP summer meeting. He co-organized the pre-meeting workshop, “Developing Community Guidelines for Consistently Curating and Representing Dataset Quality Information,” and gave a presentation, “GEOSS Data Management and Data Sharing Principles and TRUST,” on July 13. He co-organized the sessions, “Exploring New Perspectives and Formulating Best Practices for Data Uncertainty Information (Parts 1 & 2)” offered July 15, and “Citizen Science Data and Information Quality” and “Challenges of Consistently Curating and Representing Fair Dataset Quality Information,” held July 22. During the Live Research Showcase sessions July 17 and 23, he presented the poster, “Meeting the Challenges of the TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories.” He also arranged for a number of mapping tools developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) to be demonstrated and reviewed by teachers in the 2020 ESIP Teacher Workshop, “Putting Data to Work for Earth Science Education,” July 14 and 15. SEDAC is a Type I member of ESIP.

“Active Hope in a World of Environmental Extremes” was the theme of the 45th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop, this year held online July 12–15. The theme was drawn from the book Active Hope, which provides a holistic perspective on strengthening capacity to respond to contemporary crises. For the July 13 panel session, “Out of Harm’s Way? Home Buyouts and Coastal Retreat,” Greg Yetman, CIESIN associate director for Geospatial Applications, presented progress on a CIESIN project supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to develop building footprint data for flood vulnerability assessment in New York. CIESIN director Robert Chen also participated in the workshop, including a July 12 meeting of the North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes (NAAHDRI). CIESIN is a founding member of NAAHDRI, which recently issued a statement on systemic racism and disasters. 

CIESIN has joined the Council on Data Facilities (CDF), an organization of data facilities established to coordinate and facilitate geoscience data management in support of the EarthCube initiative of the US National Science Foundation. At the CDF′s Summer General Assembly held virtually on July 10, CIESIN′s application for membership was accepted, and senior digital archivist Robert Downs was elected as an at-large member of the CDF′s Executive Committee. Kerstin Lehnert of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is the chair of the Executive Committee.

CIESIN has also become a member of the VALUABLES Consortium, a collaboration with NASA led by Resources for the Future (RFF) to measure how satellite information benefits people and the environment when used to make decisions. A key focus of the work is building an interdisciplinary community of organizations interested in valuing the societal benefits of earth science information, including groups within government, academia, and the private and nonprofit sectors. Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Science Applications, serves on the VALUABLES Consortium Scientific Council.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs has been elected as one of four co-chairs of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data Working Group (Data-WG). Downs was nominated to the Data-WG by the International Science Council (ISC) World Data System (WDS). CIESIN director Robert Chen is also a member of the working group, representing the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN). The new Data-WG replaces the previous GEO Data Sharing Working Group, for which Chen had been a co-chair, and the Data Management Principles effort, which Downs previously co-led.

GEO has also established new working groups on climate change and disaster risk reduction. CIESIN research scientist Susana Adamo is a member of the Climate Change WG, and associate director for Geospatial Applications Greg Yetman is a member of the Disaster Risk Reduction WG; both were nominated by the UN SDSN, which is a Participating Organization of GEO.

Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN associate director for Science Applications, has recently been appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. National Committee for CODATA, part of the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) of the U.S. National Research Council. The Committee on Data (CODATA) is an interdisciplinary scientific committee of the ISC working to improve the quality, reliability, management, and accessibility of data of importance to all fields of science and technology.

Several new interns have joined CIESIN this summer, working remotely due to closure of CIESIN offices along with the rest of Columbia University during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alexandra Hays is working with senior systems analyst/GIS developer Kytt MacManus on the third version of the Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates, which is part of the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) data collection developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Hays is a senior at Columbia University majoring in economics, with a concentration in sustainable development. Interns Serena Killion and Caitlyn Linehan are also working with MacManus, on analysis of nighttime lights data and development of map services for SEDAC. Killion is a senior at Columbia, majoring in computer science; Linehan is completing her MS in geographic information systems (GIS) at City University of New York-Lehman College.

Four interns are working with Greg Yetman, associate director for geospatial applications, on a project supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to assess potential flood impacts on building infrastructure. Elizabeth Jackson and Elan Ganeles are juniors at Columbia; Jackson is majoring in sustainable development, and Ganeles is majoring in urban studies and earth science. Chris Mangnani is a senior at Columbia majoring in sustainable development. Siobhan Milán is a junior from the University of Virginia, majoring in economics with a minor in statistics.

Interns under CIESIN’s Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program include Mariem Ayadi, Zane Peycke, and Nancy Yun, who are completing their MS degrees in data science at Columbia′s Data Science Institute. Ayadi is working with data and program analyst Jolynn Schmidt and senior research associate Paola Kim-Blanco, creating a model that checks for errors in building footprints data. Peycke and Yun are both working with Schmidt; Peycke is is cleaning and compiling points of interest data for the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Yun is cleaning and compiling health facility data for countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN has released the 2019 annual update to the Natural Resource Protection Indicators (NRPI) and Child Health Indicators (CHI) together with two new spatial data sets developed by former SEDAC project scientists Christopher Small of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and Deborah Balk of the City University of New York (CUNY).

Natural Resource Protection and Child Health Indicators, 2019 Release supports the annual country selection process conducted by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which bases its selection criteria on a basket of governance, social, economic, and environmental indicators. For 2019, the NRPI covers 234 countries and is calculated based on the weighted average percentage of biomes under protected status. The CHI is a composite index for 195 countries derived from the average of three proximity-to-target scores.

Spatial Data from the 2011 India Census, v1 contains gridded estimates of India′s population at 1-kilometer resolution, with two spatial renderings of urban areas: one based on official tabulations of population and settlement type and the other based on the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL). The data set was developed by a team led by former CIESIN research scientist Deborah Balk, who is now associate director of CUNY’s Institute for Demographic Research. It is part of SEDAC′s India Data Collection.

VIIRS Plus DMSP Change in Lights, v1 provides changes in brightness and extent of global nighttime lights networks over two decades (1992, 2002, 2013). The nightime lights imagery was sourced from the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day-Night Band. It was developed by Christopher Small and several CIESIN geospatial experts. The data set was used to assess urban growth and development in Asian megadeltas, described in a paper published in 2018 in Global and Planetary Change. The data set is part of SEDAC's collection, Satellite-Derived Environmental Indicators.

All of these data are available for free download from SEDAC (registration with Earthdata required). The India and nighttime lights data may be visualized through the SEDAC Map Viewer or open web services.

The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN has updated two of its online mapping tools with new data and functionality. The latest version of the tool, the SEDAC Global COVID-19 Viewer: Population Estimates by Age Group and Sex, provides new visualizations of COVID-19 data in relationship to population characteristics and other potentially relevant factors. Users may now view rates of COVID-19 cases and mortality per 100k people; age pyramids and population numbers for user-defined areas; trend data on cases at the country, state (province), or county level where available; and more.

The POPGRID Viewer, a tool designed to facilitate visualization and intercomparison of the many different global-scale gridded population data sets now available, has been updated with new and more complete versions of the six population data sets included. Data for two different time periods are now included for three data sets. Users may view any combination of data in a unique four-panel viewer, and then compare population estimates for all six data sets for a specific area of interest. The POPGRID Viewer was developed by SEDAC in support of the POPGRID Data Collaborative, an initiative launched by CIESIN in 2017 to bring together both the developers and users of global georeferenced population data. 

The User Working Group (UWG) of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN met virtually June 25–26 to discuss recent SEDAC progress and plans for the coming year. The meeting was chaired by Barbara Ryan, former secretariat director of the Group on Earth Observation (GEO), and included participation by seven new UWG members as well as seven continuing members. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions on travel and meetings, the meeting utilized video conferencing technologies to facilitate presentations and discussions of key issues. The meeting was organized by CIESIN director Robert Chen and associate director for science applications Alex de Sherbinin, who serve as SEDAC manager and deputy manager, respectively, and by research scientist Susana Adamo, SEDAC's project scientist. UWG member Navin Ramankutty of the University of British Columbia gave a presentation, “Developing Global Data on Farm Size and Smallholder Agriculture.” NASA participants included SEDAC program scientist Nancy Searby from NASA′s Applied Sciences program, together with representatives from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and other NASA data centers. The UWG thanked four members whose terms ended in 2020: Guido Cervone of Pennsylvania State University, Audrey Dorélien of the University of Minnesota, Bill McConnell of Michigan State University, and Lela Prashad of NiJeL. The UWG advises SEDAC and NASA on user needs for socioeconomic and other human dimensions data, and regarding associated services in support of interdisciplinary research, applicaitons, and education.

The Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) held an online cyberseminar May 18–25 on analysis of the population-climate change-food security nexus. The cyberseminar was moderated by Raya Muttarak of the University of East Anglia and included statements by seven expert panelists from a range of disciplines. A webinar launching the cyberseminar May 18 was led by Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for Science Applications. He and CIESIN research scientist Susana Adamo are co-coordinators of PERN, which is a panel of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and a sustained partner of Future Earth. PERN is supported by the NASA Socioeonomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. A YouTube video of the webinar is available online, and background materials from the cyberseminar are posted on the PERN website.

CIESIN scientists have recently published A Living Manual for Climate Information for Adaptation Planning. This online manual is intended for those preparing National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) or specific adaptation interventions, offering guidance in using climate information in the context of adaptation planning. The material was developed as part of a coastal adaptation project in West Africa, the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). CIESIN has been providing technical assistance to WA BiCC on coastal climate resilience, as part of a team led by Tetra Tech ARD. The Web-based resource is termed a “living manual” since the contents have been updated based on the feedback of participants in a series of country workshops held in the West Africa region. CIESIN associate research scientist Sylwia Trzaska, senior research associate Emilie Schnarr, and associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin are co-authors.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs is one of the co-authors of a new paper, “The TRUST Principles for Digital Repositories,″ appearing in the Nature journal Scientific Data. Dawei Lin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the lead author. The open access paper discusses a set of guiding principles to represent digital repository trustworthiness (transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability and technology), developed by stakeholder organizations representing diverse segments of the digital repository community.

A new report from the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) provides guidance on the use of gridded population datasets from the POPGRID Data Collaborative. The report, Leaving No One Off the Map: A Guide for Gridded Population Data for Sustainable Development, reviews population data products from POPGRID members, including CIESIN, Esri, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the WorldPop Project, among others. The report was written by Hayden Dahmm and Maryam Rabiee, with input from Jessica Espey, all of SDSN TReNDS. CIESIN research scientist Susana Adamo, associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin, and CIESIN director Robert Chen also contributed to the report, along with other POPGRID participants and CIESIN staff members. POPGRID was launched in 2017 through an Earth Institute seed grant led by Chen and is supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN.

On May 18 a live virtual debate hosted and moderated by SciDev.net and SDSN TReNDS featured panelist Alex de Sherbinin; Jessica Espey, TReNDS director; Andrea Gaughan of the University of Louisville and contributor to the WorldPop Project; and Idris Jega, assistant director with the Strategic Space Applications Department at Nigeria‘s National Space Research and Development Agency. Jega is also a member of the Nigeria secretariat for the GRID3 program managed by CIESIN. The panel discussed the importance of gridded population data and their utility in helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in 2015 by the United Nations.

The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN has released several new datasets valuable in assessing future global energy development and land use and in characterizing potential long-term future population distribution in the context of climate change.

One dataset, Global One-Eighth Degree Population Base Year and Projection Grids Based on the SSPs, was developed by Bryan Jones of the City University of New York and Brian O’Neill of the University of Denver. The dataset consists of global urban, rural, and total population data for the base year 2000, and population projections at ten-year intervals for 2010-2100 at a resolution of one-eighth degree (7.5 arc-minutes). These are consistent both quantitatively and qualitatively with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) that were developed in support of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. A second dataset, Global 1-km Downscaled Population Base Year and Projection Grids Based on the SSPs, provides a downscaled version of the first dataset, at 1-km resolution (about 30 arc-seconds). This dataset was developed by Jing Gao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Spatial demographic scenario data are key inputs for the analysis of future land use, energy use, and emission patterns together with potential future climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation.

A third dataset, Global Development Potential Indices (DPI), was developed by James Oakleaf of The Nature Conservancy, and colleagues. This dataset ranks global land suitability in the sectors of renewable energy, fossil fuels, mining, and agriculture, to aid in setting priorities for development and conservation efforts. Each sector-based DPI is a 1-km spatially-explicit, global land suitability map that has been validated using locations of current and planned development.

SEDAC is one of NASA′s Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System. SEDAC seeks to improve access to and use of key socioeconomic and interdisciplinary data that are or can be integrated with remote sensing data. SEDAC datasets have been cited in more than 5,000 different scientific publications during the past 20 years.

CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert Downs participated in the 15th Plenary of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), which was held virtually from March 18 to April 10 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Downs gave the presentation, “Repository Implementation Approaches: Choices and Decisions,” co-authored with Kerstin Lehnert of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and others, in a March 31 session he led in his capacity as a co-chair of the RDA Repository Platforms for Research Data Interest Group. Downs also served as a co-chair of the RDA Data Versioning Working Group, which concluded its activities during the session, “Data Versioning WG: Final Report and Next Steps,″ held March 26. RDA is a grassroots community of data scientists, users, and producers with more than 10,000 members from over 140 countries. The 15th RDA Plenary was originally scheduled to be held March 18–20 in Melbourne, Australia.

A new mapping tool shows the density of population in relationship to reported coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases at national and sub-national levels, and permits users to obtain custom estimates of the number of people by age and sex living in an area of interest, including areas not currently reporting large numbers of cases.

Developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), the SEDAC Global COVID-19 Viewer: Population Estimates by Age Group and Sex lets users quickly access relevant population information without having to download and analyze large amounts of spatial population data. The Viewer’s unique capability is that it allows users to obtain population estimates for specific age and sex categories for any area, such as a metropolitan region that cuts across multiple jurisdictions or countries. The Viewer displays age and sex structure charts and pyramids in response to a user-drawn circle or polygon. Data on COVID-19 cases from the Johns Hopkins University are updated multiple times per day.

The SEDAC Global COVID-19 Viewer is meant for researchers, educators, and policymakers who are interested in visualizing key population characteristics such as high concentrations of elderly individuals in urban or rural areas that are, or may become, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Viewer may be especially helpful for regional analyses or for countries with limited access to spatial population data. 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. SEDAC is one of the NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and is operated by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Associate director for Science Applications Alex de Sherbinin is a co-author of the open access article, “A Systematic Review of Coastal Vulnerability Mapping,” appearing in the journal Sustainability. The paper, by Anamaria Bukvic of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Guillaume Rohat of the University of Geneva, Alex Apotsos of Williams College, and de Sherbinin, evaluates the state of coastal vulnerability assessment mapping efforts and recommends improvements in methodological rigor, policy relevance, and alignment with other vulnerability assessment paradigms. The paper stems from previous work supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding received from the National Science Foundation. The paper is dedicated to the memory of second author Rohat, who passed away unexpectedly in October 2019.

Senior digital archivist Robert Downs is also co-author of the open access paper, “Risk Assessment for Scientific Data,” published in the CODATA Data Science Journal. Authors of the paper are Matthew Mayernik of the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Kelsey Breseman of the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI); Downs; Ruth Duerr of the Ronan Institute for Independent Scholarship; Alexis Garretson of George Mason University; Chung-Yi (Sophie) Hou of the Ronin Institute; EDGI; and the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Data Stewardship Committee. The paper presents an analysis of data risk factors that scientific data collections may face, together with a data risk assessment matrix to support risk assessment and mitigation efforts.

Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, all CIESIN staff are working remotely until further notice. All of our Web sites and online services remain fully operational. CIESIN and SEDAC User Services staff are working regular hours, Monday through Friday, 9 am–5 pm US Eastern Daylight Time, except on major US holidays. For the quickest response to questions, problems, or requests for assistance, please contact us via the SEDAC Help Desk (https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/help) or send an email to ciesin.info@ciesin.columbia.edu. Please note that access to Columbia University′s campuses is restricted to essential personnel, and that domestic and international travel for business purposes is currently prohibited.

CIESIN director Robert Chen participated in a March 3 briefing for media representatives organized by the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Solution Network (SDSN), held in conjunction with the 51^st Session of the UN Statistical Commission in New York City. During the briefing, which included journalists from Springer Nature, Devex, Inter Press Service, and Bloomberg’s QuickTake, Chen discussed the accessibility and use of gridded population data for sustainable development applications. He subsequently attended a UN Statistical Commission side event, “The Data for Now Initiative,” at UN Headquarters, and was interviewed by the UN News Centre. His interview, released March 6, focused on the use of satellite imagery and gridded population data to support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including applications such as monitoring of the impacts of epidemics.

Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN's associate director for Science Applications, has been promoted to senior research scientist. The promotion recognizes de Sherbinin’s significant contributions to research on population-environment interactions, his global leadership in a range of scientific, policy, and data initiatives, and his central role in CIESIN′s continuing success. Senior research scientists are officers of research at Columbia, whose qualifications and contributions to their fields of research are equivalent to those of a full professor. The promotion comes after a thorough review by Earth Institute faculty and Columbia University’s Office of the Provost.

Alex de Sherbinin originally joined CIESIN in October 1999 as a senior staff associate and became associate director of CIESIN′s Science Applications Division in January 2015. Since 2006, he has served as deputy manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. He has been a lecturer in the Sustainability Science Program in the School of Professional Studies since fall 2018. In 2015, he was appointed to the Scientific Committee of the International Science Council (ISC) World Data System, became vice chair in 2018, and was elected as chair in January 2020. He coordinates the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) under the auspices of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and Future Earth. He has also served on a range of task groups and advisory committees on diverse topics, including citizen science data, the value of Earth Observations, population displacement, and conservation. He has published widely in leading journals such as Science, Scientific American, WIRES Climate Change, Climatic Change, The Geographical Journal, and Global Environmental Change, and co-authored high-impact policy-focused reports such as the 2018 World Bank report, Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration.

He holds a PhD in Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. He also holds a MA in geography from the University of Syracuse and a BA in geography from Dartmouth College. Prior to joining CIESIN, he worked for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Switzerland and the Population Reference Bureau in Washington DC, and served in the Peace Corps in Mauritania in 1984–1986.

Robert Chen gives a NASA Hyperwall talk at the AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, Washington, on February 15, 2020.

Scientists, students, journalists, and others from around the world met February 13–16 in Seattle, Washington, for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), focusing on the theme, “Envisioning Tomorrow's Earth.″ The meeting addressed a broad range of topics about Earth′s future, including tracks dealing with biomedical and health futures, digital futures, future Earth systems and climate, and urban futures. As part of a session, “Artificial Intelligence and Big Earth Data to Support Urban Sustainability,″ CIESIN director Robert Chen gave a presentation on harmonized global gridded population data, highlighting how machine learning approaches applied to diverse new sources of remote sensing data are helping to transform our ability to map human settlements and urban development around the world. The session was moderated by Prof. Kristie Ebi of the University of Washington and also included presentations by Daniele Ehrlich of the European Commission′s Joint Research Centre and Io Blair-Freese of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Chen also gave a talk, “Our Human Planet: Mapping Population and Infrastructure Today and Tomorrow,″ at NASA′s “Viewing the Earth from Space” Hyperwall, in the meeting′s exhibit hall. Highlights of the AAAS meeting included a plenary address by AAAS president Steven Chu, a Nobel Laureate and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, and by Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The mission of the AAAS is to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.

Seven scholars from diverse disciplines have joined the User Working Group (UWG) of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. The UWG provides strategic guidance to SEDAC on user needs and priorities for interdisciplinary data and services that support research and applications on human-environment interactions. The new members are: Sara Curran, director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington; Keith Garrett, senior geographer with the Geospatial Operational Support Team at the World Bank; Laura Kurgan, director of the Center for Spatial Research (CSR) at Columbia University; Stefan Leyk, associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado; WenWen Li, head of the CyberInfrastructure and Computation Intelligence Lab at Arizona State University; Julie Sweetkind-Singer, interim assistant university librarian for Science and Engineering Resources (SERG) at the Stanford University Libraries; and Danielle Wood, lead of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. The new members are expected to serve for four years. The UWG is chaired by Barbara Ryan, former executive director of the Group on Earth Observations, and currently includes ten other members from the public and private sectors. Nancy Searby of NASA′s Applied Sciences Program recently became SEDAC′s program scientist.