More than 130 experts on population, settlement, and infrastructure data, poverty mapping, subnational administrative boundaries, and related topics met September 30–October 2 at Columbia University′s Lamont campus in Palisades, New York, for the second Human Planet Forum. Hosted by CIESIN and co-organized with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) under the auspices of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the Forum addressed a wide range of topics, including advances in slum mapping, downscaled future scenarios of population and economic activity, the global definition of cities and rural areas, and validation and intercomparison of global gridded population data. Keynote speakers were Robert Ndugwa of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme; Lee Schwartz, the Geographer of the United States; and Vince Seaman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Forum included introductory comments by Alex Halliday, director of the Earth Institute; Martino Pesaresi of the JRC; and CIESIN director Robert Chen, as well as informal dinner remarks by Andrew Revkin, the well known science journalist who recently joined the Earth Institute to launch a new communications initiative.
As part of the Forum program, the World Wide Human Geography Data (WWHGD) Working Group organized a set of live-streamed sessions October 2, “Mapping Internal Administrative Boundaries,″ which included a panel discussion and 19 lightning talks by diverse experts from government, industry, humanitarian organizations, and academia. Lee Schwartz moderated the panel, which included Lóránt Czárán of the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA), Benjamin Lewis of Harvard University, Crystal Sholts of Google, Carmelle Terbough of Esri, and Craig Williams of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy gave one of the lightning talks, on boundary data activities by the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3) program that he directs. Presentations are available on the WWHGD web site (free registration required).
Another set of lightning talks focused on the challenges of mapping urban poverty and opportunities to make progress using Earth observations and other approaches. Working breakout sessions were held on additional topics including planning of future editions of the Human Planet Atlas, which has been published by the JRC since 2016. Nancy Searby of NASA′s Applied Sciences Program gave an update on three Human Planet projects funded by NASA, including one project led by Chen and another supported by senior systems analyst/programmer Kytt MacManus. Argyro Kavvada, executive secretary for the GEO Earth Observations for Sustainable Development Goals (EO4SDG) initiative, highlighted current EO4SDG activities, and together with Steven Ramage of the GEO Secretariat, described plans for the upcoming GEO-XVI Plenary and Ministerial Summit in Canberra, Australia. Summaries of breakout discussions were also given by former CIESIN research scientist Deborah Balk of Baruch College, Carter Christopher of the U.S. Department of State, Daniele Ehrlich of JRC, Monika Kuffer of the University of Twente, and Forrest Stevens of the University of Louisville.
The first Human Planet Forum was held at the University of Twente in The Netherlands in fall 2017. The second Forum was supported by the JRC, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, NASA, and the Earth Institute. Other contributing organizations included ITC in the Netherlands, the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. The Forum is organized every two years by the GEO Human Planet Initiative, which is currently co-led by Pesaresi and Chen.