For ten years, scientists at Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), part of the Earth Institute, have worked behind the scenes to provide researchers, lawmakers, educators, business leaders and the general public with access to crucial data and information for some of the most important scientific and policy challenges of our time. From its offices at
Originally established in Michigan in 1989 as a non-profit consortium of research institutions, CIESIN became a center within the Earth Institute in 1998 to gain greater access to leading policy and user communities and to widen its partnerships with leading research scientists from around the world. By joining with the Earth Institute, CIESIN expanded its research and educational portfolio and strengthened its role in the international scientific and policy arenas concerned with sustainable development.
In essence, CIESIN uses advanced computers and strong cross-disciplinary partnerships to create new integrated data sets and decision-support tools. “This is not an easy task, of course!” notes director Bob Chen. “The data and information needed for sustainable development cut across not only the social, natural, engineering and health sciences, but also span a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from local to global and minutes to millennia.”
CIESIN’s intricate data sets are being relied upon more and more each year. Through its Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), CIESIN’s Gridded Population of the World (GPW) dataset is often used to illustrate population exposure to natural disasters such as the recent cyclone in
The Environmental Performance Index (EPI), co-authored with Yale’s Center for Law and Environmental Policy, is another example of a highly-respected project with global effects. Marc Levy, CIESIN’s deputy director, recently traveled to the United Arab Emirates for a meeting organized by the League of Arab States to evaluate approaches to constructing aggregate environmental performance indexes in the region. “By ranking each country’s environmental performance on a scale of 0 to 100, the EPI fosters accountability both in-country and across borders,” says Levy. “It also helps to show what type of actions are more effective in improving sustainable practices by providing the ability to compare what other countries in similar geographic regions and economic groupings are doing.”
At a recent 10-year anniversary celebration, Chen and Levy noted the many cross-linked projects and collaborations with other Earth Institute centers and groups across the University. The latter includes the Columbia University Libraries, which are working with CIESIN to develop a long-term trusted digital data repository for interdisciplinary data. CIESIN is also contributing to the University’s efforts to expand interactions with
Over the next decade, Chen says, CIESIN is looking ahead to improve both understanding and management of human-environment interactions. “A key focus will be on climate change and its interactions with many other aspects of the environment and human systems, including health, conflict, hazards, poverty, biodiversity, and demographic change. CIESIN remains committed to open access to its data and information resources in support of sustainable development and to the use of cutting-edge information technology to enable and facilitate the appropriate use of scientific data and information in research, education and decision-making.”
CIESIN collaborates with many other Earth Institute and non-Earth Institute scientists on interdisciplinary research and data activities. For further reading and links to additional information, see the following: