The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations launched in 2005, has established a new Data Sharing Working Group to continue efforts to implement the Data Sharing Principles for the Global Earth Obwserving System of Systems (GEOSS). The Working Group carries on the efforts of the previous Data Sharing Task Force, which completed its work at the GEO-VIII Plenary in Beijing in November 2011. CIESIN director Robert Chen is collaborating with Paul Uhlir of the U.S. National Research Council to serve as one of the co-chairs of the new Working Group, representing the International Council for Science (ICSU). Other co-chairs include the U.S. and the European Commission, and members include representatives of more than 20 GEO members and participating organizations. GEOSS aims to interconnect both space- and ground-based observation and data systems from around the world to form a seamless system in support of societal applications, decision making, and scientific research.

Participants at the upcoming 2012 Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting are welcome to visit the CIESIN exhibit booths from Saturday through Monday in Rhinelander Gallery, second floor of the Hilton (#1207, the NASA Earth Science booth, and #1110, the Earth Institute/CIESIN, Columbia University booth), and to join CIESIN at a reception at Rosie O’Grady’s (800 Seventh Ave) the evening of Monday, February 27, from 7:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m. A field trip to the Lamont campus of Columbia University is planned for Tuesday, February 28, 1–6 p.m., with a walking tour of the research facilities, presentations by CIESIN and Lamont staff, and an informal reception (advance registration required; space is limited).

CIESIN has organized two AAG sessions:

• Sunday, February 26, 2:40 p.m.–4:20 p.m. (session 3517), Murray Hill Suite A, Hilton NY, second floor, Geospatial and Statistical Data from International Institutions (organized and chaired by Alex de Sherbinin).

• Tuesday, February 28, Feb 28, 8 a.m.–9:40 a.m. (session 5156), Central Park East, Sheraton Hotel, second floor, Frontiers in Spatial Demography and Population Geography (organized by Sandra Baptista).

Also of interest are panel discussions and papers presented by CIESIN staff:

• Saturday, February 25, 4:40 p.m.–6:20 p.m. (2605), concourse E, Hilton NY, concourse level, Science in Support of Sustainable Development and Human Rights in East Africa (Malanding Jaiteh, panelist).

• Sunday, February 26, 8 a.m.–9:40 a.m. (3123), Sutton Parlor Center, Hilton NY, second floor, Highlights in Spatial Analysis and Modelling (interactive short paper on “Spatial Analysis of Socio-Economic and Natural Hazard Vulnerability for Haiti, using GIS and Remote Sensing,” presented by Alexandra Morel, co-authored with Liana Razafindrazay).

• Sunday, February 26, 2:40 p.m.–4:20 p.m. (3516) Morgan Suite, Hilton NY, second floor, Geospatial Technologies for International Development (Mark Becker, panelist).

• Monday, February 27, 10:00 a.m.–11:40 a.m. (4215), Madison Suite, Hilton NY, second floor, Internships and Work-Based Learning as Career Preparation (Mark Becker, panelist).

• Tuesday, February 28, 10 a.m.–11:40 a.m. (5252), Conference Room J, Sheraton Hotel, lower level, Alex de Sherbinin will chair a paper session, Data and Methods in Population Geography, at which he will present a paper, “Estimating Global Net Migration by Ecosystem and By Decade: 1970-2010,” co-authored with CIESIN colleagues Marc Levy, Susana Adamo, Kytt MacManus, Valentina Mara, and Liana Razafindrazay.

• Tuesday, February 28, 2:00 p.m.–3:40 p.m. (5476), Madison Suite 6, Sheraton Hotel, Fifth Floor, at a paper session Geographical Applications of Remote Sensing (III) , Alex de Sherbinin will present a paper co-authored with CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy and Battelle Memorial Institute colleagues Erica Zell and Stephanie Weber, “Environmental Indicators: An Application of Satellite Data Products to Support High Level Decisions for National and International Environmental Protection.”
  
  In addition, Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs will be giving a plenary presentation (4333) on Monday, February 27, from 11:50 a.m.–12:30 p.m. in the Trianon Ballroom, Hilton NY, third floor.

Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in Menlo Park, California, was the venue for an international meeting held February 6–8 and organized by the Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis (TGICA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) secretariat to address the data and information needs of the scientific community involved in assessing the implications of climate change for society. TGICA was established by the IPCC to coordinate data management efforts across IPCC working groups and between IPCC assessments, including oversight of the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (DDC). CIESIN director Robert Chen and senior staff associate Xiaoshi Xing represented the socioeconomic portion of the DDC, which is hosted by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. Chen presented a new DDC data and information access policy, which was approved by the TGICA. Xing contributed to discussions about improvements to a new information resource on the development of new scenarios of future socioeconomic and environmental development, which he helped to implement. Chen continues to serve as an ex officio member of the TGICA, which is now co-chaired by Timothy Carter from Finland and Bruce Hewitson from South Africa.

The newly released report, Climate Change Impacts and Responses: Societal Indicators for the National Climate Assessment, presents the background materials and outcomes of a workshop held April 28-29, 2011 in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the workshop convened more than 50 experts from the social and natural sciences to consider the development of policy-relevant indicators of climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. It was one of three workshops on indicator needs and approaches organized to provide inputs to the National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is preparing a report to be released in 2013. CIESIN director Robert Chen served as co-chair of the workshop steering committee and synthesis team and co-authored the workshop summary (Part 1) and a white paper on the development of societal indicators for the NCA (Part 2). CIESIN senior staff associate Sandra Baptista was also a member of the workshop steering committee and synthesis team and prepared a societal indicators bibliography, inventory summaries, and an inventory table (Parts 3, 4 and 5 of the report). Chen is now one of the co-chairs of the NCA Indicators Working Group together with Anthony Janetos of Battelle/University of Maryland and Deke Arndt of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

The Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) of the U.S. National Research Council held its sixth meeting in Washington, D.C., January 31–February 1 under the leadership of two new co-chairs, Prof. Francine Berman of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information. One major focus of the meeting was the role of BRDI in relationship to international scientific data efforts led by the International Council for Science (ICSU), and in particular the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and the ICSU World Data System (WDS). CIESIN director Robert Chen, in his capacity as CODATA secretary general and ex officio member of BRDI, reported on current CODATA activities and initiatives, including plans for the 23rd CODATA international conference in Taipei in October 2012. He also helped to lead a discussion on potential cooperation between CODATA and the WDS on topics such as data policy, stewardship, citation, and access. Former CIESIN director Roberta Balstad was one of the outgoing BRDI members, having served as BRDI's vice chair and as the former chair of the U.S. National Committee for CODATA.

Two new staff appointments have been made recently in CIESIN's Science Applications Division. Sylwia Trzaska, a climate scientist specializing in climate variability and change in Africa and other developing regions, has joined CIESIN as an associate research scientist, effective January 16. She is helping to lead a project on African and Latin American resilience to climate change with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Since 2002, Trzaska has worked with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). Her areas of research include sea surface variability in the Tropical Atlantic; interannual variability of climate and its sub-seasonal features and their predictability in West Africa; and variability of the dry season in West Africa and its relationship to meningococcal meningitis epidemics, with a special focus on the role of mineral dust. Trzaska holds a Ph.D in climatology from the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.

Kimberly Peng, a former Earth Institute intern at CIESIN, has been appointed senior research staff assistant. Peng is working on the Haiti Regeneration Initiative (HRI), assisting with the data collection and analysis for the household surveys currently being conducted in the Côte Sud Initiative (CSI) region. In addition, she is supporting the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) by maintaining content for the AfSIS Web site. Peng has a B.A. in economics from the University of Maryland and an M.A. from the Earth Institute’s Program in Climate and Society.

Announced at the World Economic Forum held January 25–29 in Davos, Switzerland, the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by CIESIN and Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, identifies Switzerland as first in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges. Iraq is ranked last. The EPI has been produced every two years since 2006. The 2012 EPI ranks 132 countries, using 22 indicators in ten major policy categories including air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity, and forest management.

For the first time a complementary index showing country improvement from 2000 to 2010, the Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index (Trend EPI), was released. Latvia was ranked number one in the Trend EPI, with Russia in last place. The U.S., which is 49^th in the EPI, was just 77^th in the Trend EPI, implying few recent gains in addressing environmental issues.

Data sets making up the EPI were contributed from the International Energy Agency, remote sensing research groups at Battelle and University of Maryland, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and other entities. Lack of data in certain areas—in particular, waste management, toxic exposures, agricultural sustainability and water resources—continue to limit the ability of the EPI to contribute towards the understanding necessary to develop policies for safeguarding the environment.

Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN senior research associate, participated in “Where the Rain Falls,” a project analysis workshop organized by CARE and the United Nations University January 17–19 in Bonn, Germany. The purpose of the workshop was to review field research results from seven countries on the relationship between rainfall variability, rural livelihoods, and migration. CIESIN’s role is to provide time series climatological data (focusing on rainfall variability over the past decade) for the research sites and to provide geospatial data and mapping to help put the research results in context.

An article in the anthology, Sensing Our Planet: NASA Earth Science Research Features 2011, highlights the research of Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, who have focused on landscapes used by people in order to understand more about human impacts on ecology at the global and local scale. According to the article, “Repatterning the World,” two major insights resulted: that a surprisingly large amount of the world is actually taken up by human-inhabited areas (anthromes); and that human influence has grown so extensive that natural systems in large part now fit themselves within human systems. Rather than restricting biome definitions to various wild descriptors, as is traditional in ecology, Ellis and Ramankutty developed 21 classifications, of which only three are wild. Their results have been published as a data set, Anthropogenic Biomes, disseminated by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN. Sensing Our Planet is an annual publication that showcases multidisciplinary research using Earth-observing data from NASA Earth science data centers, including research on climate change, hazards, and more. Ellis, who is an associate professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is a member of the SEDAC User Working Group, which provides strategic guidance regarding the data and information needs of SEDAC users. Ramankutty is an assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

The first independent analysis of China environmental data at the sub-national level by an international team has been released by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Yale University. The report, Towards a China Environmental Performance Index, presents a framework for assessing environmental performance by province as an aid to developing government environmental policies. China faces formidable environmental challenges owing to its large population, limited water resources, rapid economic growth, and fast-paced urbanization.

The research was carried out in collaboration with the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning and the City University of Hong Kong. The framework that emerged, developed in consultation with many environmental experts in China and the U.S., provides a tailored set of issues and indicators that will be important to track for the foreseeable future. Core policy issues include air pollution, water quality, climate change, energy efficiency, and toxic metals, among others. According to the report, greater transparency and freer access to data, especially raw data from monitoring systems and spatial data on environmental conditions, are essential in the future development of environmental performance indicators for China.

The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and CIESIN have been the world leaders in developing national-scale environmental indices since they launched the Environmental Sustainability Index in the year 2000. The motivation behind the subnational work in China was to better reflect the country's diverse geographical landscapes and differentiated environmental stresses, and to provide a more effective tool for policy making.

CIESIN director Robert Chen has joined the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) of the National Academies for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2012. BISO promotes international collaboration in scientific research and coordinates U.S. participation in international scientific, engineering, and medical organizations. Chaired by Tilahun Yilma of the University of California, Davis, BISO serves as the U.S. National Committee to the International Council for Science (ICSU) and oversees a network of more than 20 U.S. National Committees for various ICSU scientific bodies. BISO also coordinates U.S. involvement in other international organizations such as the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), the InterAcademy Panel for International Issues (IAP), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Chen is currently Secretary General of the ICSU interdisciplinary committee CODATA, the Committee on Data for Science and Technology, through October 2012, and has extensive experience working with international scientific organizations and initiatives.

Sandra Baptista, a geographer specializing in sustainability science and the human dimensions of global environmental change, has been appointed senior staff associate at CIESIN beginning December 20, 2011. She will contribute to projects addressing sustainability indicators, environment-security linkages, and climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and resilience.

Baptista was hosted by CIESIN for two years as an Earth Institute Fellow beginning in September 2008. In early 2011 she returned to CIESIN on a part-time basis to help organize a workshop on societal indicators for the National Climate Assessment and to research sustainability initiatives and standard systems for global supply chain management, benchmarking, and decision-making in the agriculture and food sector. Most recently, she has been working with the Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation (PROVIA), a collaborative United Nations initiative to promote science-policy dialogue on climate issues. Baptista earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geography from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and received an interdisciplinary B.A. in environmental studies and Portuguese and Brazilian studies from Brown University.

CIESIN director Robert Chen and senior research associate Alexander de Sherbinin joined more than 1,000 other delegates in Abu Dhabi at the Eye on Earth Summit, held December 11–15. As part of the Summit's open sessions, Chen presented a case study on the successful development and use of integrated data on natural hazards, illustrating the potential value of expanding efforts to assess diverse natural hazards and the risks they pose to human activities and welfare. At another session organized by the Summit working group on Policy, Governance, and Institutional Networking, de Sherbinin discussed “The Case for Investing in Data.” Facilitated by the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI) and hosted by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Summit addressed the vital importance of environmental and societal data and information in decision-making from local to global levels. The Summit declaration was developed as an input into Rio +20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012.

CIESIN staff members contributed actively to the largest worldwide conference of the geosciences, the Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting held December 5-9 in San Francisco. The AGU this year attracted nearly 20,000 Earth and space scientists, experts in informatics, educators, students, and policy makers.

CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert Downs collaborated with Chris Mattmann of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to convene oral and poster sessions on the topic of “Software Reuse and Open Source Software in Earth Science.” He presented and contributed to several oral and poster papers on software reuse and development of trusted digital repositories, including a paper co-authored with CIESIN director Robert Chen. Associate director for information technology Sri Vinay also addressed Earth science informatics issues in a poster on CIESIN’s efforts to implement content management system technologies.

EI Fellow/CIESIN postdoc Alexandra Morel presented a poster on trade as a driver of oil palm expansion. Senior research associate Valentina Mara was co-author of a paper on welfare effects of natural disaster impacts in developing countries presented by Prof. John Mutter of the Earth Institute.

Representing the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), senior information specialist Joe Schumacher participated in a “Meet and Greet” to share data news and outreach ideas with staff from other NASA data centers and the NASA Education and Public Outreach community. He helped staff the Earth science data section of the NASA exhibit, where Robert Downs gave a presentation on using the 2011 TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer. Downs also served as a judge for the AGU Outstanding Student Paper Awards and presented two units for a workshop, Data Management 101 for the Earth Scientist, sponsored by the Earth Science Information Partners Federation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center (DDC) has released a series of Web pages describing the new process for developing scenarios in support of climate change research and the IPCC's Fifth Assessment. Scenarios describe plausible trajectories of different aspects of the future needed to investigate the potential consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The new scenario process allows for parallel rather than sequential development of different models, shortening the time required to develop scenarios and ensuring better integration between socioeconomic driving forces, changes in the climate system, and the vulnerability of natural and human systems.

The new DDC Web pages were developed and approved by the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impacts and Climate Analysis (TGICA) and the IPCC Technical Support Units. The DDC is managed collaboratively by the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC), the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) in Germany, and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN.

CIESIN geographic information specialist Kytt MacManus participated in a panel at the 26th Annual Northeast Arc Users Group Conference (NEARC) held November 13–16 in Saratoga Springs, New York. The panel, “Demonstrating Tools for Teachers from T3G2011,” presented methods to integrate geographic information systems (GIS) into teaching. It was part of GIS Educators Day, a full-day conference on the use of GIS and other geospatial technologies by educators, held in conjunction with NEARC. MacManus discussed the use of Web mapping applications in education, using the Population Estimation Service as an example of a product to launch geographic discussions or to introduce a lecture topic. The Population Estimation Service, available through the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, enables users to estimate population totals and related statistics within a user-defined region. Formed in 1986, NEARC is an independent regional organization for users of Esri ArcGIS GIS software, including urban and regional planners, educators, natural resource and utility professionals, and government agencies.

CIESIN staff members John Scialdone and Robert Downs participated in the 2011 NASA Earth Science Data Systems Annual Conference held November 1–3 in Newport News, Virginia. As co-chair of the NASA ESDS Software Reuse Working Group, Downs, who is senior digital archivist at CIESIN, helped lead the Software Reuse Working Group breakout sessions. He also co-authored the poster, “NASA’s Earth Science Data System Software Reuse WG: Year in Review 2011,” which was presented during the poster session November 2; co-authors were Chris Mattmann, Paul Ramirez, Cameron Goodale, and Andrew Hart, all of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Some 300 scientists and disaster management professionals from diverse backgrounds and countries gathered in Beijing, China, October 31–November 2 for the first conference of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) program of the International Council for Science (ICSU). On November 1, CIESIN director Robert Chen moderated a session on integrated disaster data, and gave a presentation on CIESIN’s extensive experience in developing and integrating data on hazards with data on exposure and vulnerability to hazards. IRDR is a 10-year research initiative of ICSU, with an International Program Office hosted by the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Associate research scientist Susana Adamo was a keynote speaker for the European Forum for Geostatistics Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, October 12–14. She gave a presentation, “A Comparison of Vector and Raster Population Time Series: Population Change in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1990-2010,” which examined the use of both gridded and vector-based population data for analyzing population change at the subnational level. Senior staff associate Liana Razafindrazay assisted in preparing the presentation.

In his role as a member of the Project Advisory Committee for the System for Integrated Modeling of Metropolitan Extreme Heat Risk (SIMMER) project, CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin attended the project meeting at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, October 10–11. The NASA-funded project is modeling extreme heat events, both present and future (through the use of climate scenarios), and mapping societal vulnerability in two major cities: Houston, Texas, and Toronto, Canada. Stakeholders from health departments in both cities attended the meeting. Houston experienced a 1 in 10,000-year heat wave this past summer, and the health department is planning to use project outputs to better understand differential vulnerability to extreme heat and to plan heat mitigation and health interventions.