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An international group of multidisciplinary researchers and computer scientists met in Annapolis July 23–24 to discuss the visualization of socio-environmental systems, with examples drawn from urban design for sustainability and climate change to biodiversity conservation. The workshop was hosted by the recently established National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), a multi-year NSF synthesis center. CIESIN senior research associate and SEDAC deputy director Alex de Sherbinin presented a poster on CIESIN and SEDAC data visualization, using examples from the SEDAC map gallery, research on climate change and migration, the Environmental Performance Index, and the SEDAC map client. He also gave a short presentation on various SEDAC data products. Keynote presentations were given by Ben Schneiderman of University of Maryland and Stephen Sheppard of the University of British Columbia.

A training workshop on scientific data management and sustainable development was held in Beijing July 16–27 with fourteen participants from nine different countries in Asia and Africa. CIESIN director Robert Chen, associate director Mark Becker, senior digital archivist Robert Downs, and senior staff associate Xiaoshi Xing gave lectures during the workshop on a range of topics including data integration methods, data management and stewardship, and use of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methods. The workshop was organized by the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and hosted by the CAS Computer Network Information Center. CODATA president Huadong Guo of the CAS Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) welcomed the group, and Robert Chen, in his capacity as CODATA secretary general, gave an introductory talk on CODATA's strategic role in international science.

Associate research scientist Susana Adamo was a keynote speaker at the Social Work and Social Development: Action and Impact conference held in Stockholm July 8–12. The conference was jointly organized by the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW), the International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW), and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). Adamo’s presentation, “Migration, Displacement, and Climate Change,” was related to “Migration in a Transforming World,” a sub-topic of the third day’s theme, “Global Social Transformation and Social Action.”

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently released its Fifth Global Environmental Outlook, a significant review and analysis of the states, trends, and outlook of the global environment, developed as a contribution to this week's 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy and Earth Institute Fellow Alexandra Morel were coordinating lead authors of chapter 1 of the report, which assessed the drivers of environmental change. Associate research scientist Susana Adamo was also a lead author of this chapter.

One week before the opening of the "Rio+20" United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, an international forum was held to call attention to the critical role of science, technology, and innovation in sustainable development. Held June 11–15 at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio, the conference was organized by the International Council for Science (ICSU), in partnership with UNESCO, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. CIESIN associate research scientist Susana Adamo co-chaired a plenary session on Human Well-being and Population Change, in which she gave a presentation on “Migration, Environment and Development.” She also presented “Developing Global Socioeconomic Data Sets for Integration with Environmental Data" at a side event, “Sharing and Stewardship of Scientific Data for Improved Decision Making and Sustainable Development,” organized by the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA). Among the featured events at the Forum was the launch of a new 10-year global initiative, “Future Earth.”

A diverse group of social and natural scientists and practitioners gathered at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado June 12-14 for a Workshop on Defining, Measuring, and Communicating the Socioeconomic Benefits of Geospatial Information. Organized under the auspices of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), this workshop followed up on two previous GEO workshops held in 2010 and 2011 with a focus on quantitative socioeconomic methodologies and metrics for assessing and communicating the value of geospatial information. CIESIN director Robert Chen gave a presentation on science perspectives on valuation of geospatial data in the concluding session on next steps. He was also a co-author of a poster presentation with CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert Downs on "Assessing the Value of Data to Science and Applications." A key output of the workshop was a set of suggestions on how to develop a multidisciplinary "community of practice" that could contribute to a coordinated research program on valuation of geospatial data and information.

Left to right: Elizabeth Moss, Robert Downs, and Hailey Mooney, with the poster on data citation they co-authored with others for IASSIST 2012.

Robert Downs, senior digital archivist at CIESIN, participated in IASSIST 2012, the 38th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology. The meeting, which focused on the theme, "Data Science for a Connected World: Unlocking and Harnessing the Power of Information," was hosted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago and held June 4–8 at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. On June 6, Downs gave a presentation, “Improving the Trustworthiness of an Interdisciplinary Scientific Data Archive," co-authored with CIESIN director Robert Chen. Downs also co-presented the poster, "Data Citation: IASSIST Takes Action!,” which was co-authored with Michelle Edwards of the University of Guelph, Michele Hayslett of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Barbara Mento of Boston College, Hailey Mooney of the Michigan State University Libraries, Elizabeth Moss and Mary Vardigan of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, and Michael Witt of the Purdue University Libraries. Downs also served on the Program Committee for IASSIST 2012.

The User Working Group (UWG) of SEDAC, the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center operated by CIESIN, met in Washington, D.C. June 6-8. Chaired by Dr. Molly Macauley of Resources for the Future, the UWG provides SEDAC with strategic guidance regarding the data and information needs of the users served by SEDAC and also reviews specific SEDAC data development and dissemination plans. At the June meeting, the UWG reviewed SEDAC's progress in improving its web site, implementing new outreach strategies, and assessing scientific citations of SEDAC data. The UWG also provided feedback on SEDAC's plans related to disaster loss data and the development of an integrated data collection on wetlands of international importance. Dr. Lee Schwartz, the State Department Geographer, was invited to meet with the UWG to discuss user needs for human geography data in support of humanitarian and national security priorities. SEDAC's NASA program scientist, Craig Dobson, along with several staff members from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, also participated in the meeting.

CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin presents a paper on lessons learned from climate hotspots mapping. Adaptation Futures: 012 International Conference on Climate Adaptation, Tucson, Arizona, May 30.

CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin and deputy director Marc Levy participated in Adaptation Futures: 2012 International Conference on Climate Adaptation, held May 29–31 in Tucson, Arizona. de Sherbinin chaired a session on vulnerability assessments methodologies, and also presented two papers: “Climate Hotspots Mapping: What have We Learned?” and “Government-led Displacement and Resettlement Due to Climate Change.” Levy gave a presentation as part of a panel on "Data Priorities for Global Adaptation Research." On June 1, de Sherbinin led a user workshop on Data Gaps for Research and Action on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation, organized by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) jointly with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP). Approximately 50 participants spanning a range of disciplines, user communities, and world regions attended.

Several CIESIN staff participated in the recent conference, Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences (ICARUS III), held at Columbia University May 18–20. The theme of the meeting was scales, frameworks, and metrics. Senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin gave a presentation, “Climate Hotspots Mapping: What Have We Learned?” Associate research scientist Susana Adamo, senior staff associate Sandra Baptista, and associate research scientist Sylwia Trzaska also attended. The ICARUS initiative, begun in 2009, focuses on social-scientific and humanistic approaches to understanding climate-related vulnerabilities, risks, and human and ecosystem responses over time and across scales.

Members of the Jordanian battalion of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) rescue children after a hurricane destroyed their orphanage. September 7, 2008, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. UN Photo/Marco Dormino. www.un.org/av/photo/

A one-day conference, “Identifying Lessons for Natural Resources Management in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding,” was hosted at Columbia University April 25 by CIESIN, Advanced Consortium for Conflict, Cooperation and Complexity (AC4) and the Earth Institute, in partnership with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). More than 130 participants explored lessons in strengthening post-conflict peacebuilding through the lens of natural resource management. Many were authors of case studies in a seven-volume book series launched the same week and featured prominently during the conference. Panel discussions and breakout sessions reflected on lessons emerging from from the cases and implications for practice and scholarship.

A two-day workshop followed the event, focusing on strategies to develop educational and training tools utilizing the new case studies and other relevant material. Among the innovative teaching methods and products highlighted was the Ground|Work simulation tool, wherein students devise a strategy for managing environment and resource challenges in the context of a fictional post-conflict country. The online teaching tool, developed by School of International Affairs adjunct professor and CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy and program manager Alex Fischer in partnership with The Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL), is currently used in Levy’s course on environment, conflict, and resolution strategies.

For more information about the conference and the book series, please go to www.environmentalpeacebuilding.com.

Mark Becker, associate director of the Geospatial Applications Division at CIESIN, and Robert Downs, CIESIN senior digital archivist, participated in the Global Geospatial Conference 2012, held in Quebec City, Canada, May 14–17. The theme of the conference was “Spatially Enabling Government, Industry, and Citizens,” and included the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) 13 World Conference, the GEOmatics for Informed DEcisions (GEOIDE) Scientific Conference, and the Canadian Geomatics Conference 2012. On Wednesday, May 16, Becker presented ,“SEDAC Collaboration with Land Atmospheric Near Real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE),” which was authored with geographic information specialist Sneha Rao. Becker also acted as the moderator for the session, “Spatially Enabling Industry II.” That same day, Downs presented a paper authored with Robert Chen, director of CIESIN, titled, “Towards Sustainable Stewardship of Digital Collections of Scientific Data.” Becker is serving a three-year term on the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association Board.

The new online mapping service, the National Priority List (NPL) Superfund Footprint Mapper, was featured as part of a Webinar sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Partnerships for Public Environmental Health (PEPH) on May 7. Participants numbered 158 attendees, more than 30 from federal agencies. Senior research associate Meredith Golden showcased the Mapper with assistance from geographic information specialist Tricia Chai-Onn, who also helped develop the service. Golden highlighted data from several projects of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center operated by CIESIN. These include the U.S. Census Grids and the Global Poverty Mapping Project. The NPL Superfund Footprint Mapper can display population and environmental characteristics for areas surrounding more than 1700 NPL Superfund sites. An archived recording of the Webinar will be available soon on the SRP Web site.

Deputy director Marc Levy participated in a workshop, “Climate and Security: Evidence, Emerging Risks and a New Agenda,” held May 3–4 in Paris. The workshop was sponsored by Institut du Développement durable et des relations internationales (IDDRI), Sciences Po, University of Exeter, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For the segment focused on research, which took place on May 3, Levy gave a presentation on a panel entitled, “Peace-building and Mitigation & Adaptation Projects.” The following day he participated in a panel that synthesized recent research results for policy makers.

More than 100 experts on Earth observations gathered in Geneva April 30–May 4 to coordinate plans for integrating remote sensing and other environmental and socioeconomic data under the auspices of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). CIESIN director Robert Chen participated in the GEO Work Plan Symposium 2012, reporting on the efforts of the GEO Data Sharing Working Group to reduce the legal and institutional barriers to sharing data across the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) being developed by GEO member countries and other participating organizations. Chen is one of the co-chairs of the Working Group, representing the International Council for Science, and serves as task coordinator for the GEO work plan task on data sharing. CIESIN geographic information specialist Sneha Rao subsequently participated in the kickoff meeting for the fifth phase of the GEO Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-5), held May 3-4. She presented CIESIN’s planned contributions to the pilot, emphasizing ways to integrate data on population, land use, hazards, and sustainability with Earth observations to support GEO's priority societal benefit areas such as disaster management, agriculture, and climate adaptation.

CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy participated in a meeting April 27 to summarize the results of the United Nations Environment Programme Fifth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5), at United Nations headquarters. The meeting was convened by the Permanent Missions of the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States to the UN, and UNEP. The meeting focused on the successes and failures of the world’s implementation of internationally agreed environmental goals. Other speakers included John Matuszak, U.S. Department of State; Jorge Laguna-Celis, Permanent Mission of Mexico to the UN; Daniel Ziegerer, Swiss Federal Office for the Environment; and Jose Almonte, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Dominican Republic. Levy’s comments emphasized the poor track record in meeting international environmental goals, and he made a case for international action focused more heavily on drivers of environmental change and oriented more toward transforming large-scale systems. Levy is a coordinating lead author, along with CIESIN post-doctoral scholar Alexandra Morel, of a GEO-5 chapter on drivers of environmental change.

CIESIN senior research associate Meredith Golden participated in a conference sponsored by the Northeast Superfund Research Program, “Complex Mixtures and Exposures: Analyzing, Modeling, and Predicting Fate and Effects at Multiple Levels of Environmental and Biological Systems,” held April 23–24 at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. More than 50 toxicologists, ecotoxicologists, epidemiologists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, engineers, and research translation experts convened to examine the challenges to understanding and predicting the environmental, biological, and mechanistic aspects of complex mixtures and complex exposures. As rapporteur for the research translation perspective, Golden, who is co-PI of the Research Translation Core for the Columbia University Superfund Research Program, emphasized the need for scientists to identify key audiences and to engage in productive dialogue in order to foster innovative science and research collaborations to improve public health at Superfund sites.

The inclusion of disaster risk reduction as one of the seven critical issues in the 2012 Rio+20 Summit presents a timely opportunity for consideration of political and financial action within the context of sustainable development. A meeting April 11, “From Sendai to Rio: Cultivating a Disaster-Resilient Society for Sustainable Development,” convened a wide range of local and international government officials and experts to discuss building climate and disaster resilience in coastal cities, and to share their expertise in influencing the public and policy understanding on sustainable development, especially in the urban context. Held at Columbia University's Low Library in Manhattan, the meeting was organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations, and the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), in collaboration with The Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the Center on Japanese Economy and Business.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, gave opening remarks, along with Jun Yamazaki, ambassador, Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations, and Margareta Wahlstrom, special representative of the secretary-general for Disaster Risk Reduction. Cynthia Rosenzweig, head of Climate Impacts Group, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), served as moderator. Key discussion points included exploring lessons learned from recent disasters; discussing the benefits of fortifying cities against disaster; and recommending issues for future research and applications. The results of the dialogue will be made available to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development-Rio+20 and to the member cities of UNISDR's "Making Cities Resilient" campaign.

A major gathering of the global sustainability science and policy communities took place in London March 26–29. The conference, “Planet Under Pressure: New Knowledge Towards Solutions,” was organized in response to the need for new solutions to achieve sustainable economic and environmental development for all. Nearly 3,000 people, representing science, policy, development, investment, industry, technology, the media, and other sectors, attended the meeting, along with several thousand more online participants. CIESIN director Robert Chen gave a presentation on integrating data from multiple scientific disciplines in a session, “Data Challenges for Global Sustainability,” that was co-chaired by former CIESIN director Roberta Balstad. Senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin presented on urban heat island effects at a panel on urbanization and on best practices for resettlement in anticipation of future climate change impacts at a panel on climate change and migration. He also presented a poster on data integration for global change research. The conference was sponsored by the global environmental research programmes of the International Council for Science (ICSU), with the aim to provide scientific inputs and recommendations to the June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio (Rio +20). A new integrated research initiative, “Future Earth” was also launched at the conference.

On March 26, the associate director of CIESIN’s Geospatial Applications Division, Mark Becker, gave a presentation on CIESIN’s data products and research capabilities to a group consisting of approximately 25 representatives from the State Department, the USGS, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and other government agencies. The presentation, which took place at the U.S. State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., involved an overview of some ongoing projects including planned updates now underway for the launch of the fourth version of the Gridded Population of the World data product, an updated subnational Infant Mortality Rate grid, and CIESIN’s role in the Earth Institute’s Haiti Regeneration Initiative. The following days, March 27 and 28, Becker participated in the first World-Wide Human Geography Data Working Group Meeting. The Working Group is designed to build voluntary partnerships around human geography data and mapping focused on the general principle of making appropriate information available to promote human security. Becker presented information on the goals, objectives, and current status of the African Soils Information Service (AfSIS) project, a collaboration between the Earth Institute and African scientists and institutions, to develop detailed digital maps of soils in 42 sub-Saharan African countries of in support of sustainable agriculture. CIESIN is helping to build information systems for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating the data to a wide range of end users.