Paper by Tendai Musvuugwa, Muxe Gladmond Dlomu and Adekunle Adebowale: “Despite best efforts, the loss of biodiversity has continued at a pace that constitutes a major threat to the efficient functioning of ecosystems. Curbing the loss of biodiversity and assessing its local and global trends requires a vast amount of datasets from a variety of sources. Although the means for generating, aggregating and analyzing big datasets to inform policies are now within the reach of the scientific community, the data-driven nature of a complex multidisciplinary field such as biodiversity science necessitates an overarching framework for engagement. In this review,... (More >)
Mapping Africa’s Buildings with Satellite Imagery
Google AI Blog: “An accurate record of building footprints is important for a range of applications, from population estimation and urban planning to humanitarian response and environmental science. After a disaster, such as a flood or an earthquake, authorities need to estimate how many households have been affected. Ideally there would be up-to-date census information for this, but in practice such records may be out of date or unavailable. Instead, data on the locations and density of buildings can be a valuable alternative source of information. A good way to collect such data is through satellite imagery, which can... (More >)
Crowdsourced Sensor Data Powers Smoke Map
OpenGov: “The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) have released updates to the AirNow Fire and Smoke Map to help protect communities from the effects of wildfire smoke. Started as a pilot project last year, the map pulls data from three sources: temporary monitors such as those the Forest Service and other agencies have deployed near fires; crowdsourced data from nearly 10,000 low-cost sensors nationwide that measure fine particle pollution, the major harmful pollutant in smoke; and monitors that regularly report to AirNow, EPA’s one-stop source for air quality data. The agencies announced improvements to the... (More >)
Have behavioral sciences delivered on their promise to influence environmental policy and conservation practice?
Paper by Maria Alejandra Velez and Lina Moros: “After four decades of refining our understanding of decision-making processes, a form of consensus has developed around the crucial role that behavioral science can play in changing non-cooperative decisions and promoting pro-environmental behaviors. However, has behavioral science delivered on its promise to influence environmental policy and conservation practice? We discuss key lessons coming from studies into the dual process theory of thinking and the presence of cognitive biases, social norms and intrinsic motivations. We then discuss the empirical findings by reviewing relevant research published over the past five years, and identify... (More >)
Fighting Climate Change: The Role of Norms, Preferences, and Moral Values
Paper by Armin Falk: “We document individual willingness to fight climate change and its behavioral determinants in a large representative sample of US adults. Willingness to fight climate change – as measured through an incentivized donation decision – is highly heterogeneous across the population. Individual beliefs about social norms, economic preferences such as patience and altruism, as well as universal moral values positively predict climate preferences. Moreover, we document systematic misperceptions of prevalent social norms. Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate- friendly behaviors and norms among their fellow citizens. Providing respondents with correct information causally raises individual willingness... (More >)
Realtime Climate
Climate Central …:”launched this tool to help meteorologists and journalists cover connections between weather, news, and climate in real time, and to alert public and private organizations and individuals about particular local conditions related to climate change, its impacts, or its solutions. Realtime Climate monitors local weather and events across the U.S. and generates alerts when certain conditions are met or expected. These alerts provide links to science-based analyses and visualizations—including locality-specific, high-quality graphics—that can help explain events in the context of climate change…. Alerts are sent when particular conditions occur or are forecast to occur in the next... (More >)
How volunteer observers can help protect biodiversity
The Economist: “Ecology lends itself to being helped along by the keen layperson perhaps more than any other science. For decades, birdwatchers have recorded their sightings and sent them to organisations like Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, or the Audubon society in America, contributing precious data about population size, trends, behaviour and migration. These days, any smartphone connected to the internet can be pointed at a plant to identify a species and add a record to a regional data set. Social-media platforms have further transformed things, adding big data to weekend ecology. In 2002, the Cornell... (More >)
Help us identify how data can make food healthier for us and the environment
The GovLab: “To make food production, distribution, and consumption healthier for people, animals, and the environment, we need to redesign today’s food systems. Data and data science can help us develop sustainable solutions — but only if we manage to define those questions that matter. Globally, we are witnessing the damage that unsustainable farming practices have caused on the environment. At the same time, climate change is making our food systems more fragile, while the global population continues to rapidly increase. To feed everyone, we need to become more sustainable in our approach to producing, consuming, and disposing of... (More >)
Deepfake Maps Could Really Mess With Your Sense of the World
Will Knight at Wired: “Satellite images showing the expansion of large detention camps in Xinjiang, China, between 2016 and 2018 provided some of the strongest evidence of a government crackdown on more than a million Muslims, triggering international condemnation and sanctions. Other aerial images—of nuclear installations in Iran and missile sites in North Korea, for example—have had a similar impact on world events. Now, image-manipulation tools made possible by artificial intelligence may make it harder to accept such images at face value. In a paper published online last month, University of Washington professor Bo Zhao employed AI techniques similar... (More >)
Establishing a Data Trust: From Concept to Reality
Blog by Stefaan Verhulst, Aditi Ramesh & Andrew Young, Peter Rabley & Christopher Keefe: “As ever-more areas of our public and private lives succumb to a process of datafication, it is becoming increasingly urgent to find new ways of managing the data lifecycle: how data is collected, stored, used, and reused. In particular, legacy notions of control and data access need to be reimagined for the twenty-first century, in ways that give more prominence to the public good and common interests – in a manner that is responsible and sustainable. That is particularly true for mapping data which is... (More >)
