• Erin Doxsey-Whitfield, geographic information specialist, and Kytt MacManus, geographic information system programmer, led a NASA EarthData Webinar on January 29, “Discover NASA’s Updated Gridded Population of the World (GPW).”
• Using the results of a climate vulnerability mapping exercise for Mali, West Africa, as an example, a new video describes how SEDAC data were integrated with NASA data to produce a decision support tool for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
• Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN associate director for science applications, gave a keynote address at the 2nd Kavli Symposium on Science Journalism in San Jose, California, February 16–18. He highlighted the need for investments in monitoring and data for the sustainable development goals, the importance of open data, and the promise and limitations of “big data” in filling data gaps.
CIESIN staff have been involved with several activities at United Nations headquarters in New York City recently:
- A side event held February 27 prior to the 46th Session of the United Nations (UN) Statistical Commission, which focused on the role of earth observations in developing indicators for the post-2015 development agenda. Moderated by director Robert Chen, the event was co-organized by Switzerland, the Group on Earth Observations, the UN Global Geospatial Information Management Secretariat, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
- An expert group meeting on policy integration developments related to the Sustainable Development Goals held January 28–29, in which deputy director Marc Levy participated.
- An expert panel on population, sustainable development, and the post-2015 development agenda on January 22, in preparation for the forty-eighth session of the Commission on Population and Development, at which Alex de Sherbinin, associate director for science applications, gave a presentation on population dynamics, the environment, and climate change (available on United Nations Web TV starting at about 2 hours, 10 minutes).
• The NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN maintains an external advisory group. Myron Gutmann, former associate director for social, behavioral, and economics sciences at the National Science Foundation now at the University of Colorado Boulder, is the new chair. Other new members are William Hoffman of the World Economic Forum, Theresa Pardo of the State University of New York at Albany, Adam Storeygard of Tufts University, and Leah Vanwey of Brown University.
• For the Earth Institute’s Fall 2014 Haiti Dialogue Series, Marc Levy, CIESIN deputy director; Sabine Marx, managing director of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions; and Roger-Mark DeSouza of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars gathered November 21 to discuss recent research linking climate change, natural hazards, development and fragility in Haiti. The session was chaired by Alex Fischer, program coordinator and associate director of the Haiti Research and Policy program, and was co-sponsored by the European Union Institute for Security Studies.
JOB TRANSITIONS
CIESIN is pleased to announce several new appointments and visiting scholars:
- Alex de Sherbinin has been appointed the new associate director for science applications, effective January 1. Since joining CIESIN in October 1999, de Sherbinin has addressed topics including population dynamics, climate vulnerability mapping, climate change and migration, environmental indicators, and remote sensing applications. He continues to serve as the deputy manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN and to co-lead the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN). He holds a PhD from the faculty of geo-information science and Earth observation (ITC) at the University of Twente, the Netherlands.
- Greg Yetman is now associate director for geospatial applications, marking his return to the Center after three years with Esri Canada. He originally joined CIESIN in 1999. He holds a master′s degree in geography from McGill University and a certificate in application and software development from Columbia University.
- Xue Liu has joined the Science Applications Division as a senior staff associate, focused on developing data systems and services for global and African digital soil mapping projects. Liu has more than 15 years of experience in remote sensing and geospatial technologies and holds a PhD. in photogrammetry and remote sensing from Wuhan University.
- Prof. Idris Bexi Warsama of the University of Djibouti is visiting CIESIN from mid-March to late April of this year, working to develop a vulnerability map for Djibouti and to refine CIESIN training materials on climate change vulnerability mapping. Bexi Warsama has spent the last year at University of California–Davis as a Humphrey Fellow. He earned his PhD in geophysics from the Sorbonne Paris Cité University.
- Victoria van der Land, a PhD student at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, was a visiting scholar at CIESIN for three months in late 2014, working on her doctoral thesis on environmental change and migration in the West African Sahel.