Rio+20 logo from conference brochure (pdf).

Following the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, Rio+20 is a high-level conference centered on seven critical global issues in an effort to address sustainable development initiatives from previous summits and “secure renewed political commitment” for sustainable development.

Rio+20 will converge on the themes of a “green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication” and “the institutional framework for sustainable development.”

The seven critical issues at Rio+20 are: Jobs, energy, cities, food, water, oceans, and disasters. Attendees will convene to discuss issues such as “green jobs,” focusing on positions in agriculture and industry aimed at preserving the environment; sustainable energy as a means to strengthen economies; and the building of community resilience in the face of disasters.

Three preparatory meetings were held prior to the conference, the first in May 2010. A 10-member bureau was elected at the first meeting to guide the process in preparing for Rio+20.

In May 2010, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon elected Sha Zukang as secretary-general for Rio+20, who currently heads the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

“Sustainable development is not an option,” Zukang says in a conference brochure. “It is the only path that allows all of humanity to share a decent life on this, one planet. Rio+20 gives our generation the opportunity to choose this path.”

For more information, see the Rio+ website.

Image Source: Tom Heyes

The project is a partnership with U of M, Indiana University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Illinois.

Other data sharing sites do exist. SEAD will be distinctive in that it intends to use social networking technologies comparable to YouTube and Flickr and in that its focus will be on research related to sustainability. The purpose of these sharing tools will be to increase data availability and provide opportunities for social networking among individuals with shared interests. The team of developers also emphasizes the potential SEAD will have as an educational tool, especially for universities.

The goal of the project is to foster faster growth in research and application of sustainable practices. Sustainability can have several meanings. SEAD will focus on those that relate to environmental issues. The research that SEAD intends to include covers information related to resource use, human/land interactions, social parameters that impact environmental issues, environmentally related technologies, and environmental economics.

The scope of the project is broad and does not focus just on one area of sustainability, which is an intentional choice. Environmental issues are driven by natural and human forces and by the relationship between those forces. As a result, research that occurs in diverse fields, sociology and geology for example, can be influenced by one another. Colleagues from different departments may have contact with one another and specialists within a field may have contact with each other from across the region via conferences. But online networking sites such as the one SEAD aims to create offer greater opportunities for researchers to pinpoint the data or background information they need from a greater pool of researchers.

For the first few years, developers expect that SEAD will work primarily with researchers in the Great Lakes and Missouri Basin area. If the project is successful, it could provide a model for other data-sharing projects to help the United States meet a goal of improving human use of the environment.

Alex Steffen, co-founder of Worldchanging.

Steffen, a Seattle-based writer who helped create the best-selling “Worldchanging” book and website, will give the keynote speech at this year’s IEEE Professional Communication Society conference at the University of Cincinnati. He offered an advance look at his Oct. 17 talk during a recent interview with Earthzine.

Steffen says his message is focused on two central themes: The degree to which small steps can result in big changes, and the need to better educate the public on scientific findings that demonstrate the need for action.

“It’s hard work, but we actually do know we can make things better than they are now,” he said.

“I personally believe that what we need to do is not lower our ambitions in order to do things that feel easy, but to raise them.”

One example is efforts toward achieving sustainability, such as building carbon-neutral cities and providing more environmentally friendly products to the masses.

See Earthzine to Hold Third Annual Essay and Blogging Contest on Sustainability.

Leaders need to think about the strategic systems where intervention will pay off over time, such as urban planning, Steffen said.

“If you try and approach the problem of a metro area’s transportation emissions by small steps of changing the actual vehicles, the odds of us getting where we need to go are very small,” he said.

“On the other hand, we know transportation emissions are directly related to land use. Compact communities tend to drive less.”

Creating denser communities also results in increased use of public transportation, more walking, and people who don’t own cars at all.

“The most sustainable trip is the trip you never had to take,” Steffen added. “What you end up with is a city where emissions drop much, much more quickly than they would if you were trying to change it vehicle-by-vehicle.”

From that come other benefits, he explained. More physical activity results in better health and less emissions result in cleaner air. Infrastructure also is less costly to build and maintain in denser communities, and such areas can enjoy a larger tax base.

Steffen thinks there’s low awareness among the world population when it comes to the concept of sustainability. “But if you describe it as more general principles — not taking out more than nature is able to put back in, that sacrifice people’s long-term ability to live — those are human ethics that almost everybody understands.”

Still, there aren’t enough people who grasp the basics of topics like climate science, and the profound effect that human-induced changes to the planet could have on the ability of humanity to survive.

(See Changing the Media Discussion on Climate and Extreme Weather)

“My sense is that we have a unique design problem in front of us, which is learning to tell stories that respect the accuracy and complexity of our attempts to understand the world, but that also are digestible and understandable to people who are really lacking some of the basic knowledge needed to participate in that process,” Steffen said.

“We have discussions within our professional fields, but that takes for granted all sorts of insight into the nature of the world and the scientific process that understands that things are complex, but we can still talk about uncertainties and acknowledge that we have what we believe are a working set of insights.”

One of the big challenges is learning how to better describe the systems that run our planet, our relationships to those systems, and what we’re learning about how those systems are changing. In that sense, the connection to Earth observation is direct, he said.

“Satellites, for instance, are our eyes on the planet,” Steffen said. “What we learn through the data generated tells us a lot about the systems around us.”

Observations taken from the sky or on the ground also can identify huge problems that aren’t immediately noticeable to the naked eye.

“I think that if those of us who care about science informing our decisions in life and in policy want to see a good outcome here, we have to be smart about how we communicate the insights that we’re having and observations and conclusions we’re drawing from those things, so they make sense to a wider group of people.”

The “Worldchanging” book, first released in 2006, is in its second edition.

Steffen is now working with Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit design services firm that aims “to build a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.”

For more information on Steffen and his work, see alexsteffen.com.

– New projections put the earth’s population at 10 billion in 2100.

Summary

Before 1990, the development level of a country was typically “observed” by looking at a single economic figure, such as Gross National or Domestic Product per capita. With the advent of the Human Development Report in 1990, many people came to prefer the HDR’s Human Development Index, with its enriched blend of knowledge, health, and finances. The 1994 HDR went conceptually farther, with an essay on people-centric human security – the level of economic and social security in a society. One could say that analysts had moved from monochromatic to multispectral observation, with a concept paper but no actual effort to pursue hyperspectral observation of societies. Finally, in 2008, embryonic hyperspectral observation was facilitated by unveiling of the prototype global Human Security Index (HSI). Improved global HSI Version 2 was recently released around a trinity of Economic, Environmental and Social Fabric covering about 230 national-level societies. A prototype HSI at county level for the USA is in review, and the approach is being extended to developing countries at sub-national levels using publicly available data. How do people actually fare in their homes, communities, country, or the world? How well can such a formulation process characterize such situations? How can such an indicator be useful in research, strategy and policy development, and the pursuit of progress? Such discussions are beginning, with considerable opportunities for people in the environmental Earth observation community.

Why a Human Security Index?

It’s an attempt to push the envelope on characterizing socio-economic situations of people.

Since 1990, the Human Development Report (HDR [1]) of the United Nations Development Programme, and its Human Development Index (HDI [2]), have helped to re-focus thought on development from raw “economic growth” to something more profound. The HDI blends indicators of education, health, and income, showing that some low-income countries can still deliver reasonable knowledge and health environments (while in some cases reducing the need for cash in the pocket) and thus deliver high quality of life without financial riches. The 1994 HDR [3] discussed people-centric human security – summarized as “Freedom from fear; freedom from want.” [4] Surin Pitsuwan [5], formerly of the United Nations Commission on Human Security and current Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has observed that human security is a longstanding evolutionary concept, going back to such thinkers as Hobbes and Rousseau – and that human security is arguably the reason for the state in the first place. Yet news and decision-making in most countries appear to remain enshrouded in “economic growth” rather than using relevantly targeted measures on conditions of all the people. More recently, the “Sarkozy Report” [6] was commissioned by the President of France aiming to help advance thought beyond “GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress.” Do we need a more comprehensive “index of leading socio-economic indicators”? Could such an index help decision-makers to strategize and pursue improved situations? Might it help researchers, the media and the public to better play their roles toward better understanding of current situations “here and in possibly better-run administrations” and more effective pursuit of better win-win outcomes for everyone? Yes – though the Sarkozy report neither made much progress toward answers [7] nor seems to have resulted in a publicly viewable process toward same.

To professionals in the Earth observation community, where GDP could be Human Development’s monochromatic monoscopic photography, the HDI could be termed “the NDVI of Human Development.” (The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index has been used as a proxy to assess several phenomena). The HDI has widespread and diverse application and support. The global HDI has spawned numerous national HDIs, treating many developing countries at higher administrative/spatial resolution, such as provincial/state or county/district levels. There is a non UNDP HDR for the USA [8]. However, there are also laments about claimed imperfections: (1) It’s a proxy. What are we measuring? Might the HDI be insufficient improvement over GDP per capita [9] for characterizing human development? [One possible response: “The HDI has been useful. If we look deeper we see that some countries have done better with health care or education than for raw GDP, and have done well for their people in the eyes of some analysts. But we should be able to do better than the HDI by now.”) (2) It’s not fully global. Can “UNDP’s global HDI” be more geographically global? Pursuing global completeness is germane to usefulness a global HDI. When the HDI was first released, it was a challenge to find relevant data of consistent quality for many countries. The first HDI broke ground by encompassing 130 economies. By 1994 it covered 173 economies but still only 177 in 2007 before ratcheting to 182 in 2009 but then dropping to 169 in 2010. The countries left out of UNDP’s HDI have intellectual and cultural assets [10], which the world can benefit from if such countries are not ignored. Has UNDP’s HDI become a laggard in geographic completeness? Yes. An HDI encompassing ~230 countries is now available [11, 12] to demonstrate the potential for more global completeness of such an indicator. (3) Can we make a better index now? Can the HDI be thematically complemented, or perhaps replaced, by a more comprehensive measure? Let’s see (below) if there is a good answer to that question.

Creation of a global Human Security Index

Some have argued [e.g. 13] that a human security index could not be created, as we lack (A) agreement on the concept of human security and (B) appropriate data. But it has also been argued [ibid] that “there must be a way to recognize it [human security] and measure it.” Similar concerns did not impede the release, refinement, growing respect and use of an HDI two decades ago. And we are now enriched with several innovative datasets and candidate indicators on a diversity of subjects related to human security, which may be utilized and hopefully strengthened by additional engagement. So why not try to forge ahead? Beyond this, in Louis Emmerij’s report on the United Nations Intellectual History Project [14, just stumbled across in 2011] which celebrates selected vital contributions from the United Nations, he specifically lists “measures of human security, where integrated approaches should be explored going far beyond the traditional compass of either the military or the security forces of countries” as the second of five priorities to be worked on now under the UN umbrella. Thus, when a prototype Human Security Index enumerating 200 countries was shown to colleagues for their thoughts [while I was with the United Nations for most of the past decade], the response was “Publish it.” This was done in 2008-2009 [15, 16].

Since then a discussion and prototyping process has led to the formulation of the HSI around a trinity of Economic, Environmental, and Social Fabric Indices, with each of those indices comprised of datasets, and indicators produced by the research community. Currently, over 30 datasets and indicators [17] are used in global HSI Version 2, released at the end of 2010 [18, 19], which covers about 230 national-level societies.

The HSI process consists of vetting candidate data and indicators, assimilating appropriate candidates into tabular data management tools to work on index formulations, linking the data to a geographic information system for visualization and assessment – and discussing issues and findings with data developers and researchers.

Website http://www.HumanSecurityIndex.org was created to present and discuss data, maps, and issues surrounding the global HSI. The Website is hosted by researchers at Osaka City University.

Toward a higher resolution Human Security Index

Discussions following the release of the global HSI resulted in encouragement to attempt a HSI at a community level such as for the USA. A community-level HSI [and its constituent data] could eventually be useful [20] for awareness and assistance in understanding current situations, and in strategy, design and delivery of improved public services. For example, could one better anticipate the information absorption/response capacities of specific socio-economic regions, which could impact efforts to mitigate or respond to disasters as they unfold?

A table showing the flow of input data through thematic components to the Human Security Index (right), a map of one input data set (just below), the trinity of components and the composite HSI are shown (farther below) in this article.

Spatial resolution: Work on HSI USA was begun in 2009, with prototypes starting to be formulated in July 2010 at the county level. Some counties are quite large in area; some (but not all) source data are available to smaller geographic units than counties (e.g. to Census Blocks and Block Groups, or to grid cells in the case of data crafted from satellite imagery). One fertile R&D area may be the merging of data of diverse input resolutions, for optimal observational capability.

Thematic resolution: Discussions with diverse colleagues in the UN, at conferences, and in academic circles in the USA and overseas have evolved around how to strengthen the conceptual framework for formulating the HSI at global or local “resolutions” – now revolving around Economic, Environmental, and Social Fabric Indices. Reasonable economic, environmental, and social situations for all people are often considered the point of good

Figure 1. Log(Median Household Income), part of Human Security Index USA Prototype Version 0.1. Blue indicates relatively higher income => better situations.

governance – no matter what the policy modality for achieving such goals. But it could be argued that fiscal growth has long been the dominant focus of many-most decision-makers and their support staff; environmental issues were merely an undercurrent until nationally somewhat mainstreamed since Earth Day (in 1970) and globally mainstreamed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (in 1992). Social issues might arguably reside in the minds of only some decision-makers [21]. The HSI for the USA currently includes about 35 input “channels” as sketched in the table below. Some of the input data (such as the computation for “creative class”) are actually multi-channel thematic aggregates, so the total number of actual inputs is considerably greater than 35.

As in almost any endeavor of Earth observation, there are challenges in characterizing the target (visualizing the level of economic, environmental and social security for people and communities of diverse circumstances) with the available sensors (data collection systems) and data paths (via data communication, management, and funding systems that may have been designed for different core applications). For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics computes unemployment at six levels, U1 through U6. It regularly reports level U3, but that is not nearly comprehensive enough for researchers or indicator developers trying to understand entrenched unemployment / underemployment, including people who have given up the search for jobs in their fields of expertise (e.g. auto manufacture or exploration geochemistry), and may have accepted work, say, as taxi drivers or in the fast food industry, perhaps part-time with no benefits. There are Websites which discuss such issues [e.g. 22] and argue that a complete enumeration of unemployment would yield considerably higher numbers; but there is no known public county-level dataset for peer review, possible strengthening or use. Recently, the American Community Survey of the Bureau of the Census released its first five-year temporal composite, which now enumerates a diversity of estimates for all counties, where previous three-year composites covered only about 1800 of about 3140 counties. The new figures include estimated parsing of employment by numbers of hours worked weekly, numbers of weeks worked annually, by gender and other

Figure 2. Economic Fabric Index USA, Prototype Version 0.1. Blue indicates relatively better situations.

criteria that offer hope of improved characterization of employment at the county (and, in at least some cases, potentially finer) level. However, the situation is not always one of improved observational capabilities. For example, income data suitable for computing the distribution of income inequality (such as the Gini Coefficient [23, 24]) may not be available to adequate quality, partly as a result of the discontinuation of the Long Form process in the 2010 census, according to Mark Burkey (reference [24] and written communication, 2010).

Input data have been selected which appear to be best available proxies for important situations for a cross-section of people. In general, data are managed in the database in their original units of measure, but also are scaled between 0.000 and 1.000 for processing in the HSI and its component Economic, Environmental, and Social Fabric Indices. In general, the data values are given a linear stretch, placing the “high human security” tail at 1.000 and the “low human security” tail at 0.000. However, in the case of income, two decades of experience with the HDI resulted in a logarithmic scaling of income between tails [25], under the generally accepted understanding that an additional $100 in ones pocket is more than 200 times more valuable for people with incomes of $1000/year than for people making $200,000/year.

Candidate HSIs are currently being formulated in two ways:

(1) Averaging scaled input data with equal weights into the six components shown in the Table, then averaging the six components with equal weighting into the HSI, and
(2) Averaging scaled input data with equal weights into the six components shown in the Table, then averaging those six components into their respective Fabric Indices (by averaging the six (global) or four (USA) components of the Social Fabric Index into the SFI with equal weighting), then averaging the three Fabric Indices with equal weighting into the HSI.

Figure 3. Environmental Fabric Index USA, Prototype Version 0.1. Blue indicates relatively better situations.

The latter approach was used in global HSIv2, and is being used in HSI USA – in order to more evenly balance economic, environmental, and social aspects of the HSI.

Why so many input data sets? Partly for signal enhancement. Just as a seismic exploration crew working in a noisy environment takes multiple readings for a given location, input data to the HSI may have undetected, poorly understood, and/or impregnable noise. Where the signal to noise ratio of some input datasets may not be fully known, combining such data with others addressing a similar broad subject may help the economic, environmental, or social signal to rise above the noise.

Some people have observed that such indicators are most useful when they are simple. Agreed. But what does “simple” mean? GDP is simple to show, but not necessarily simple to assess as an indicator of the financial security of a former auto worker now with a part-time job in a fast food restaurant because of downsizing at the former employer. (County median income, unemployment and underemployment, percentage of people without health “insurance” coverage, mental stress and housing foreclosure rates might all better touch on that person’s human security than might county GDP.) The HDI was relatively simple and straightforward, after users got accustomed to its evolved methods of computation. The HSI, being modeled after the HDI, is considered conceptually straightforward, despite its greater comprehensiveness with over 30 input datasets.

What does the HSI look like at this point? Here are plots of household median income, the prototype Economic, Environmental, and Social Fabric Indices, and the resultant prototype HSI USA.

Figure 4. Social Fabric Index USA, Prototype Version 0.1. Blue indicates relatively better situations.

This paper is not a socio-economic assessment of the HSI, so such discussion will be omitted here. However, when one looks at constituent datasets (such as median income as shown in Figure 1) as well as the three fabric indices and the composite HSI itself, one sees many overall broad similarities, yet significant differences in detail. It is clear that median household income alone resembles human security in the USA (as illustrated by the HSI, Figure 5), or even Economic Fabric (Figure 2), about as well as a single-channel narrow-band monochrome image might resemble a color composite built from hyperspectral data.

There have been numerous indicators of well-being, from the original Places Rated Almanac of 1981 to The Economist’s Quality of Life Index. But most such indicators appear aimed at the middle class and above. The Human Security Index is broader-based, intending to better characterize situations for all peoples. Combining the summary graphics with the input database can be useful for a number of research arenas and interests. This should be possible after additional documentation and review brings HSI USA to releasable quality.

In one test application, an experimental county-based HSI was drafted for rich, upper middle class, middle class, and poor residents, for each county in the USA. This was done by drafting working hypotheses on what factors might be important, or unimportant, for more or less wealthy people – then re-selecting data inputs for demographic prototype Human Security Index models according to the various working hypotheses. For example, per capita income and percentage of university graduates in a county may be less important than cost of living or availability of special public school programs for working class or unemployed Americans. The percentage of people whose English is less than “good” and the percentage of high school graduates in a county may be less important to people in the top 2% of the income spectrum. Some counties do persistently well or poorly in such experimental demographic models, but others change considerably. In some locations this approach is moot: there are relatively few very poor people in Douglas County, Colorado, and few wealthy people in Starr County, Texas.

Figure 5. Human Security Index USA, Prototype Version 0.1. Blue indicates relatively better situations.

In another test application, sub-national level HSIs are being drafted for some developing countries to test the hypothesis that HSIs may be initiated using publicly available data for many such countries. A data base being formulated for Thailand, for example, uses data publicly available from national Human Development Reports for Thailand, plus data from the Website of the (Thai) National Statistical Office. Actually, with the considerable progress in decision-support data development in many countries, such a task is rather more achievable than one might suspect – at least for an introductory working prototype and initial use of such information for improving developmental strategy efforts.

The previous two paragraphs merely sketch possible applications of the Human Security Index approach. Undoubtedly there are many more such approaches to data bases integrating economic, environmental, and social data to community levels. Of course, the Human Security Index is hardly the first such compilation. Thirty years ago the U.S. Navy Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center compiled TERDAT [27, 28] which included data layers such as elevation, “characteristics of terrain” and “percentage of urban development” on a global grid.

What might be next?

Some thoughts at this point in the HSI process:

• Assessments by indicator developers might focus on selection and improving wholesale source data sets and documentation, and on possible improvements of formulation to support research and application. There appear to be considerable opportunities for partnering between existing curators of certain data sets and groups interested in strengthening such efforts. There are many opportunities for new authorship groups to innovate and publish new data and indicators. But this all depends on possible interests by data developers. Who might be interested in such a thing?
• Assessments by researchers (when the full data, not just graphics displays, are made available) might look at what situations may result from peoples’ behavior (e.g. “voluntary” unhealthy practices like substance issues including over-eating, etc.), or from governance (up to 70+% of relatively poor county residents are without health “insurance”, as many as 50+% are functionally illiterate in some counties, over 10% of black males aged 25-40 residing in prisons/jails in the globally leading country in incarceration rate, etc.).
• Assessments by decision-makers might ask questions on how to improve situations in areas of weakness. In the example of disaster management, how might evacuation plans and practices consider the non-negligible numbers of people who

o Are carless and weakly served by existing transportation infrastructure? But when evacuation opportunities are provided, may (for whatever reason) decline to take advantage of them?
o May be afraid to leave their at-risk abodes for the community shelter out of concern that they or their children may be subjected to harassment or violence?
o Are injured or ill, but who have tenuous life-lines that have been disrupted by the disaster and lack resources to find alternatives?
o Are in other groups that may have not been served well from recent strategies or efforts?

Let’s visualize the financial situations of most members of national and state-level strategic planning teams. How many national or local agency strategic plans mainstream inputs from population groups with household incomes below 50% of the national median? Could the strategic planning process be improved with more fully mainstreamed diversity of participation in the key decision-making teams?

Where might the Earth Observation community fit in?

Potentially, quite squarely in the middle of the process. Many of the approaches to developing the HSI derive from three-plus decades of remote sensing, GIS, and indicator development – mostly involving direct Earth observation. But the HSI needs diverse perspectives, sources of data, etc. to make it workable.

Are there opportunities in the Earth observation community? Certainly. Several possibilities include:

• Of the three Fabric Indices, the Environmental Fabric Index may currently need the most work. This is partly because, as a NOAA staff member, I have not engaged environmental and EO colleagues until I am satisfied that a useful HSI can be crafted. The Environmental Fabric Index of the global HSI currently looks at situations (vulnerability from disasters and from environmental contamination), sustainability (living within our means environmentally), and governance (policies and deliveries protecting people in the broad environmental arena). How should one compile and present data to represent vulnerability to floods and other environmental disasters, contamination of air, water, food [29, 30]? How to improve on the current list of inputs shown in the Table – where data can be represented for counties or global nations? Answers to such questions are best evolved by groups of people, not by fiat.
• Currently, little input from EO capabilities is in the HSI. Considering the potentials (drought risk, for example) for adapting EO data to useful Human Security inputs, will this situation change? What R & D opportunities are out there?
• Opportunities abound with respect to the global HSI, and also for national HSIs – including the one for the USA shown here.

Earthzine encourages comment/discussion. Let’s see what evolves.

To take part in the conversation about Earth observation and HSI, please comment below. You can also contact the author, David Hastings, at David.Hastings@noaa.gov.

About the Author:

David Hastings has worked on indicator development in the field with the Ghana Geological Survey, academically in Ghana and Michigan, and in computer analysis labs for the USGS EROS Data Center and the NOAA Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, with an additional tour with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. His current work combines these in an attempt to better observe our current situations – using existing data from publicly accessible sources.

References

[1] UNDP, 1990-2010. Human Development Report. United Nations Development Programme, New York. Online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/

[2] UNDP, 2010. Human Development Report 2010. United Nations Development Programme, New York. Online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/

[3] UNDP, 1994. New dimensions of human security. IN Human Development Report 1994. United Nations Development Programme, New York. pp. 22-46. Online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_1994_en_chap2.pdf

[4] This was an unattributed use of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech.

[5] Pitsuwan, Surin, 2007. Regional cooperation for human Security. Keynote address: Conference on Mainstreaming Human Security: the Asian Contribution. Bangkok, 4-5 October 2007. Online at:
http://humansecurityconf.polsci.chula.ac.th/Documents/Transcriptions/Keynote Speech on Regional Cooperation for Human Security.pdf

[6] Stiglitz, Joseph E., Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, 2009. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Paris, 292pp. Online at http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

[7] The report had lengthy discussion of problems, but little detail about proposed solutions.

[8] SSRC, 2010. The Measure of America 2010-2011. Social Science Research Council. Online at http://www.measureofamerica.org

[9] Cahill, M. B., 2005. Is the Human Development Index redundant? Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 31, pp. 1-6.

[10] For example, several Pacific island countries find that social disincentives against crime can succeed, virtually eliminating the need for incarceration. Could the USA (the global leader in incarcerating people) learn something from them?

[11] Hastings, David A., 2009A. Filling Gaps in the Human Development Index. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Working Paper WP/09/02. Online at http://www.unescap.org/publications/detail.asp?id=1308

[12] Hastings, David A., 2011. A “Classic: Human Development Index with 232 countries. HumanSecurityIndex.org Online at http://www.humansecurityindex.org/?page_id=204

[13] Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou (2008). Human security. Human Development Insights, Issue 17. United Nations Development Programme, New York. Online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/nhdr/support/insights/2008-02/

[14] Emmerij, Louis, 2007. Creativity in the United Nations: A history of ideas. Development, v50, pp. 39-46. Online at http://www.unhistory.org/reviews/emmerij_creativity.pdf

[15] Hastings, David A., 2008. Describing the human condition – from human development to human security: a remote sensing and GIS approach. Proceedings, GIS-IDEAS 2008 Conference “Toward Creative and Sustainable Humanosphere” online at http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gisideas08/viewabstract.php?id=299

[16] Hastings, David A., 2009B. From Human Development to Human Security: A Prototype Human Security Index. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Working Paper WP/09/03. Online at http://www.unescap.org/publications/detail.asp?id=1345

[17] Several composite indicators, such as the Environmental Vulnerability Index, the Environmental Performance Index, the Global Peace Index, and the Food Security Index (the latter developed for the HSI), incorporate 25, 50, 24, and 8 datasets respectively, so the global HSI incorporates over 150 input datasets overall when one counts the source data used in composite indicators.

[18] Hastings, David A., 2010. The Human Security Index: An update and a new release. GIS-IDEAS 2010 Conference “Toward Environmental Security and Sustainable Development” online at
http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gisideas10/viewabstract.php?id=381

[19] Hastings, David A., 2011. Documentation for HSI Version 2. Online at http://www.humansecurityindex.org/?page_id=28

[20] Perhaps (very) cautious testing of such applications could now commence.

[21] But these have been a part of corporate social responsibility for over a decade (see writings on the “triple bottom line” by John Elkington, etc.) and were arguably a foundation for works such as Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Declaration of Independence.

[22] Williams, John. 2010. Alternate unemployment charts. Shadow Stats. Online at http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

[23] Wikipedia, 2011. Gini coefficient. Online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

[24] Burkey, Mark L., 2006. Information on the Gini Coefficient and income inequality. Online at http://www.ncat.edu/~burkeym/Gini.htm

[25] HDRO, 2008. Calculating the Human Development Indices. IN Human Development Report 2007/2008, p. 356. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office. Online at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_EN_Complete.pdf

[26] C.O.L. = cost of living

[27] Cuming, Michael J. and Barbara A. Hawkins, 1981. “TERDAT: The FNOC System for Terrain Data Extraction and Processing.” Technical report MII Project M¬254 (Second Edition). Prepared for Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center (Monterey, CA). Published by Meteorology International Incorporated.

[28] Clarke, Leo 1992. FNOC Global Elevation, Terrain, and Surface Characteristics. Digital Raster Data on a 10-minute Cartesian Orthonormal Geodetic (lat/long) 1080×2160 grid. In: NOAA-EPA Global Ecosystems Database Project, 1992. Global Ecosystems Database Version 1.0 Disc-A. US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder, Colorado. Online at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ecosys/cdroms/ged_iia/datasets/a13/fnoc.htm

[29] Kessler, David, 2009. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Rodale Books, Emmaus, PA. 336pp.

[30] Kenner, Robert and Eric Schlosser, 2009. Food, Inc. (film) Online at http://www.foodincmovie.com

Address for Correspondence
Muhammad Afzal
School of Engineering
University of the West of Scotland
Paisley, PA2 1BE, Scotland
United Kingdom
E mail: Muhammad.Afzal@uws.ac.uk

Figure 1: A pair of images of the Pasni area from February 16, 2005, and October 19, 2001, reveals some of the effects of recent, devastating flooding in southern Pakistan along the coast of the Arabian Sea. In these images, water appears dark blue (nearly black in places) to light blue, depending on the how much sediment is in the water. Vegetation is red, and the desert appears in shades of light brown and brownish yellow. The city of Pasni is located at the tip of the peninsula.

Abstract

Due to the high unpredictability in catchments, rainfall variability and extreme weather events have become two important factors for policymakers. The variability can exist at various time-scales ranging from seasonal, sub-seasonal to long-term climate change. In Pakistan, a large part of the economy and agriculture relies mostly on water resources. Agriculture accounts for one fourth of Pakistan’s GDP and employs not less than 40% of the labour force. The irrigation system of the country depends on the precipitation in the Himalayas and the monsoon rainfall. Extreme weather events show a lot of variability in the region especially during the monsoon season, but limited research has been carried out to better understand these changes. Floods and other natural disasters may result in loss of infrastructure, energy insecurity, political and economic instability and deterioration of natural ecosystems in the country. In this situation, sustainable development is the only way forward to face both natural and man-made disasters. This paper presents the effects of extreme weather events in Pakistan and their impacts on sustainable development.

Key words: climate change, variability, sustainability, Pakistan, vulnerability

1. Introduction

Water resources are crucial to any aspect of the economy, especially for a country like Pakistan, where the agriculture significantly contributes to the country’s economy. Pakistan has one of the biggest irrigation systems in the world. One of the major rivers, the Indus, which supplies water to large areas of Punjab and Sindh provinces, also contributes 33.5% of the country’s energy supply [1]. Tarbela Dam is built on this river which helps to store water for irrigation systems, flood deterrence, and production of hydro-electric power. Indus river water comes from ice and snow melting in the Himalayas.[2] .

Figure 2: Aug. 11, 2010, flood waters have washed away all ground means to reach the people stranded in the northern areas of the Swat valley in Pakistan. Photo from US Military via Wikimedia Commons

The Indus Water Treaty (IWT, 1960) has restricted Pakistan to rely on the Indus River while India has the right to divert substantial flows of water from other rivers like Sutlej, Ravi, Beas and Chenab [3]. This has resulted in drying of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers, which were not only the major contributors to agriculture in the region but also the source of groundwater recharge. Therefore, the IWT [4] may come under review as groundwater resources are depleting in the region and water quality has been seriously affected, especially in the southern Punjab of Pakistan.

There is evidence of change in monsoon rainfall patterns in this region. Turner and Slingo [5] found that mean intensity in rainfall during the monsoon has increased and that there is also an increase in the heavy rain events on the sub-continent. Climate change model simulations also found similar changes in spatial distribution and magnitude of the heaviest extremes of daily monsoon rainfall as assessed through the use of high emission scenarios [6]. These changes in patterns and frequency of extreme weather events are likely to affect the sustainable water resource management in Pakistan.

Water demand in Pakistan has increased due to recent urban development and more irrigation demands to supply food for one of the top ten growing populations and grain producing countries in the world [7]. Water scarcity is also becoming a major threat. Due to the changes in climate variability, extreme weather events (flood risk) are more likely to increase. These extreme weather events had devastating impacts on the country’s economy in the past. One example of this is the recent flood in 2010. The history of floods in the region extends back to the dawn of human civilization, primarily affecting the settlements near the rivers. The occurrence of these events is more frequent in the South-Asian Region, where the most densely populated area has shown more uncertainty in the last few decades [6]. Pakistan suffered major floods in 1950, 1956, 1973, 1976, 1988 and 1992. In each case, a million hectares of agriculture land was inundated and millions of houses were demolished [6].

Devastating flood events not only destroy the cultural landscape but also break the continuity of sustainable development. This makes vulnerable villages and towns less sustainable due to the loss of economy, infrastructure and livelihood. As a result of flooding, hundreds of thousands of people migrate to neighbouring villages and towns, which create an extra burden on public services. There is also evidence from a number of studies [8] that malaria incidence is positively correlated with such extreme rainfall events.

Figure 3: Sustainable development. (Source: Department for Business and innovation and skills)

Sustainable development in general has numerous definitions. The definition provided in the 1987 Bruntland Report on “Our Common Future” is: “Development that meets the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Another definition is improving the quality of human life (attaining non-decreasing human welfare over time) within the carrying capacity of supporting eco-systems [9]. So far, no mechanism has been described in sustainable development that maintains resilience against surprises and shocks such as extreme weather events. Figure 3 shows the flow diagram of sustainable development which clearly indicates that sustainable development cannot be achieved without having equilibrium between environmental, economic and social factors. Therefore, flood protection is necessary so that the present generation may face extreme events without endangering the welfare of future generations.

Figure 4: Pakistan federal government budgetary allocation for the 2010-11 (Source: Federal Board of Revenue Government of Pakistan)

3. Socio-economic health as a pre-requisite for sustainable development

The economy is the key to sustainable development. Experts explain this with the metaphor of a car which represents sustainable development. In this metaphor, the driver of the car is the government, and the wheels on the car are the economy. The car is useless without wheels. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts can have significant impacts on the economy and thus sustainable development in a country like Pakistan. The recent flood shows the country’s vulnerability to climate chaos, which killed more than 2000 people, left more than four million people homeless and one-fifth of the country submerged. Greater than 60% country’s population lives in rural areas, and 22% of population lives below the National poverty level [7].

Most of the areas which are affected by flooding in Pakistan are already economically vulnerable. Moreover, more than 40% of Pakistan’s population relies on agriculture, which is one of the major segments of the economy and the labour force. In 2010-11 the Pakistan Government has allocated very limited resources to rural development food and agriculture (Fig. 4). Unfortunately, these are more vulnerable due to climate change as compared to the other sectors. This budget was passed before the July, 2010 flood events

Figure 5: Literacy rate in Pakistan from (1951-2009) (Source: National literary policies of Pakistan)

in Pakistan. At a recent Kiribati conference on climate change, Prof. Kropp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: “The fairy tale that enough money for adaptation could fulfil development and climate protection goals in parallel is not true. Development is needed and threatened by climate change, but the money for development is needed in addition”.

One of the major impediments in achieving the sustainable development in Pakistan is its low literacy. Pakistan’s current literacy rate is about 57% as shown in Fig. 5. The literacy rate in rural areas is far less than the urban areas. Most of the areas which were affected in the 2010 flood are from the lowest literacy region, as seen in Table 1. The Muzafargarh and Rajanpur regions have the lowest literacy rate in Punjab province. Only 2% of the GDP is allocated for the education in the country. More recently the Provincial Government has taken some initiatives to increase public expenditure which are mostly relying on external funding rather than from the Central Government. Since independence, the country has made significant progress in literacy, but more work is needed in the rural areas to attain the future sustainability targets, especially in more vulnerable areas like small towns and villages along the Indus River.

4. Concluding remarks

Pakistan should consider adaptive infrastructure for unexpected extreme weather events, both droughts and floods, which may become more intense or frequent due to climate change. For this, both hard and soft adaptations can be used. The hard adaptations include maintaining a better irrigation system, improved watershed management, and updated water supply and sewage systems, high standard transportation networks and disaster prevention infrastructure. The soft adaptations may involve training and awareness-raising activities for local people through workshops and seminars, improved planning for evacuation and increased support to the community. Both strategies need to be implemented on a global scale with support from the developed countries.

Pakistan, like many developing countries, needs to integrate climate change into development actions by better planning and strong policies with long-term visions. Integration of the climate change agenda into development can help to sustain water resources, disaster prevention, agriculture, forest and ecosystems, health and sanitation, and the economy.

References:

1. Asif, M., Sustainable energy options for Pakistan. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2009. 13: p. 903–909.

2. Young, G.J. and K. Hewit. Hydrology research in the upper Indus basin, Karakoram Himalaya, Pakistan. in Hydrology ofMountainous Areas (Proceedings of the Strbské Pleso Workshop, Czechoslovakia, June 1988. 1988. Czechoslovakia: IAHS

3. Mustafa, D., Hydropolitics in Pakistan’s Indus Basin. 2010, United States Institute of Peace: Washingtom. p. 1-15.

4. Mustafa, D., Indus Water Treaty and its effects on future water supply demand in Pakistan., M. Afzal, Editor. 2010: London.

5. Turner, A.G. and J.M. Slingo, Subseasonal extremes of precipitation and active-break cycles of the Indian summer monsoon in a climate-change scenario. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 2009. 135: p. 549–567.

6. Turner, A.G. and J.M. Slingo, Uncertainties in future projections of extreme precipitation in the Indian monsoon region. Atmospheric Science Letters 2009. 10: p. 152–158.

7. World-Bank. Pakistan: Data, Projects and Research. 2010 [cited 2010 24th December ]; URL: http://web.worldbank.org/

8. Jones, A., E., et al., Climate prediction of El Niño malaria epidemics in north-west Tanzania. Malaria Journal, 2007. 6:162: p. 1-15.

9. IUCN , I.U.f.C.o.N., Caring for the Earth: a strategy for sustainable living. 1991, Washington.

10. DTI. Department for Business and innovation and skills, UK. 2010 [cited 2010 20th December http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/index.html

Muhammad Afzal
B.Sc. (Chemistry, Botany & Zoology) & M.Sc. (Botany, major Environmental Biology), Pakistan
M.Sc. (Energy & Environmental Management) Glasgow Caledonian University (2006)
Professional membership: The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (AIEMA).
PhD continued (2008-2012): University of the West of Scotland, UK
Research topic: Vulnerability of the water supply systems due to future changes in climate variability in the United Kingdom

Summary: My research project focuses on the increasing variability of our climate and its effect on the vulnerability of our water supplies. It aims to improve our understanding of the consequences of climate change on water supply systems. This is accomplished by examining historical records for trends in rainfall variability and by using the new UKCP09 climate change scenarios along with a hydrological model to determine how future changes in climate variability are likely to affect the future water supply of a number of case study regions across the UK with contrasting amounts of water storage.

Is it possible to register 1 billion “acts of green” before the global Earth Summit in Rio in 2012? So far, the number of registered acts is more than 96 million and counting (via a counter on the Acts of Green website). In addition to personal pledges to reduce, reuse and recycle, the site features major undertakings such as a massive two-day Earth Fair planned for Manhattan, New York, and a Global Day of Conversation to be held at locations around the world. Earth Day is celebrated on April 22.

While the Earth Day Network is headquartered in Washington, D.C., activities are planned or in process on every inhabited continent — and while Antarctica isn’t actually involved in the events, it is the subject of a major new documentary entitled The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning.

Meanwhile …

Deforestation in the Amazon - Photo from Earth Observatory

Nations across Asia are participating in the UN’s Billion Tree Project.

International Plantation Day, to be held on April 23, is an extension of the successful UN project, and will take place in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

According to the Earthday.org website, “International Plantation Day … aims to promote to all of the Earth villagers about the importance of deforestation and the underlying significance of environmental conservation education. There will be around more than 100 cities, and different environmental groups in different countries jointly participating …”

Dubai is 'greening' its energy policies. Map from US Department of Energy Website.

According to the website The Green Prophet, “HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashhid Al Maktoum — Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai — inaugurated Dubai’s very first Global Energy Forum.

Organized by the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, the three-day event ended April 19 and signaled a very real shift in Dubai’s attitude towards energy.”

Volunteers working to clean up Pulicat Lake in India. Image from US State Department

India is also involved with the Global Day of Conversation.

Measure from Space what we Treasure on Earth

For more than half a century now, since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, “Earth Observation” (EO) satellites have been monitoring our global environment, revealing its fascinating beauty while demonstrating at the same time its inherent fragility and exposure to rapidly growing human-induced stresses (e.g. ozone hole, and climate change).

The unique perspective from space, epitomized by the iconic “Earth Rise” picture (taken in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission), also contributed to the emergence of the concept of “Sustainable Development,” by convincing many of the need to better manage the limited (and rapidly depleting) natural resources of our home planet in a more sustainable manner for the benefit of future generations.

Over the last decades, the principles of Sustainable Development – broadly defined within the Bruntland report “Our Common Future” (1987) – have been progressively adopted by world leaders following a series of Earth Summits (Stockholm, 1972; Rio, 1992; Johannesburg, 2002). Development targets, such as the Millennium Development Goals, have been defined during these summits and agreed upon by policy makers and business sectors in order to improve quality of life, protect the environment, and fight global poverty and hunger.

In this context, large “Multilateral Development Banks” (MDBs), such as the “World Bank” (WB), and the “European Investment Bank” (EIB), adopted a series of sustainability principles to better account for social and environmental risks in project financing. Large MDBs started to routinely implement sustainability principles (including environmental aspects in addition to social and economical ones) at the heart of their financing practices. In parallel, new economic concepts like “Ecosystem Services” and incentive schemes like “Payment for Ecosystem Services” (PES) were being developed and designed in order to put an economic value on environmental resources and secure preservation and restoration of ecosystems (e.g. carbon sequestration, biodiversity, watershed payment schemes).

Figure 1: Collaboration between World Bank and ESA on Climate Change adaptation. Working Session during the 5th Urban Research Symposium on 'Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an urgent agenda' (28-29 June, Marseille, 2009). From left to right: Anthony G. Bigio (World Bank), MaanChibli (Mayor of Aleppo City), Pierre-Philippe Mathieu (ESA), Yves Ennesser (Egis Bceom International).

EO satellites can help MDBs to meet this challenge. They are uniquely placed to measure the cumulative environmental impact in a synoptic and consistent manner around the globe, even in the most remote places, where in-situ surveys cannot be performed effectively. This is particularly useful as the problems addressed by MDBs have often a global nature, and therefore require global data.

A set of about 10 initial, small-scale pilot projects aiming to demonstrate the value of EO information services to support the development sector have been performed in partnership between the “European Space Agency” (ESA) and various MDBs (e.g. EIB, WB), within the framework of the ESA “Value Adding Element” (VAE) program. The main aim of the VAE is to support European and Canadian geo-spatial information industry efforts to develop and grow the prospects of EO services being used in businesses and organizations for their operations.

Figure 2: Assessing Progress in Re-Plantation Projects. The land cover map of 2008, based on SPOT and Landsat data, showed that the re-plantation project has resulted in a 220ha increase in new plantation (mainly Eucalyptus) area (in pink) inside the EIB project area (AOI1 in red contour). The area in white could not be classified due to the presence of clouds. Courtesy GRAS, Spot Image, and help of Luxspace Sarl.

Fostering the use of Earth Observation into development and financing practices

(1) Monitoring re-plantation activities in the Solomon Islands

This demonstration aims to monitor the extent of re-forestation activities in Kolombangara, a small island located in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. The EIB needed information on the progress of forest replanting that started in 2007.

EO-based information on Land Cover, together with area statistics and fragmentation metrics (edge density), were delivered to EIB by GRAS (Geographic Resource Analysis and Science), based in Denmark.

The EO-based land cover classification products (Fig. 2) were used to assess progress in the re-plantation project by identifying patterns of change, and in particular the extent of new plantations. The land cover change information enabled the project promoters to identify the “hot spot” regions, which require careful in-situ monitoring, and thereby help them to better manage resources by optimizing (expensive) field surveys. It also provided them with synoptic information complementing local data (available mainly in paper format), as satellites are able to monitor the most remote regions of the island, where in-situ surveys are difficult to perform or sometimes simply not possible.

Ultimately, EO images appeared to be an excellent communication tool, providing a synoptic picture of the project to support dialogue with local stakeholders and show the value of the investment.

Figure 3: Land cover data in 2008 over the Ambatovy mining site. Courtesy KEYOBS, Spot Image.

(2) Quantifying environmental impact of Mining activities in Madagascar

This demonstration aims to set the baseline for monitoring the environmental impact of a nickel-cobalt mining and processing project partly supported by the EIB in Eastern Madagascar (Ambatovy). This includes the development of a mining site, a refinery close to the harbor on the coast, and a connecting pipeline. In order to limit the environmental impact of the construction, the project proposed the establishment of forest buffer zones at the mining site and of an off-set area of primary forest located at Ankera, 60 km south‐west of Toamasina.

EO-based information on Land Cover (Fig 3), based on optical data (e.g. SPOT-5, Landsat ETM), was provided to EIB by Keyobs, based in Belgium. This information provided the EIB with a synoptic picture of the environmental footprint of the project, facilitating the preparation of a dedicated field visit, and setting the baseline for future monitoring of the effectiveness of the planned biodiversity protection measures (e.g. forest buffer, preserving primary forest). The potential of the EO to quantify the environmental impact of international mining activities at the global level, in a consistent, verifiable and cost-effective manner, was also acknowledged as a key advantage of the technology to further support global reporting.

“The service has been a success. It provides valuable information about the land cover of the area, demonstrates to the users exactly what can be monitored and allows them to make an informed decision about whether and how to proceed with EO-based monitoring of this important project,” said Mr. Eberhard Gschwindt, Technical Advisor in the EIB Projects.

Figure 4: Quantifying Vulnerability of Coral Reef Habitat in Belize. Thermal stresses quantified by the Monthly average temperatures for the warmest month of the year (SST) in Belize, based on ESA AATSR (Along-Track Scanning Radiometer and the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer) from 1991-2008. This temperature data allows categorization of coral reefs in Belize by thermal stress regime. Empty (white) polygons are unclassified, falling between thermal regimes. Reefs were classified according to their past temperature patterns into the categories: (A) High chronic (thus acclimated) and low acute stress, expected to cope best with rising temperatures, (B) High chronic and high acute stress, where the selection for more thermally-tolerant genotypes would be greatest, (C) Low chronic and low acute stress, not acclimated to any thermal stress and expected to be fair badly if subjected to unusual warming and (D) Low chronic and high acute stress, likely to be the worst-affected by climate change. More information in Mumby et al., 2011, Reserve design for uncertain responses of coral reefs to climate change. Ecology Letters 14: 132-140. Credits: MSEL, University of Exeter

This demonstration aims to support a strategy implemented by the WB for preservation of coral reef sites. The focus is the “Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System” (MBRS), which is the second longest barrier reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, extending over 1,000 km from Mexico to Honduras. The MBRS provides a wealth of Ecosystem Services (e.g. coastal protection, fishery, tourism, habitat for species), fundamental for the livelihood of the inhabitants of Belize. It is significantly exposed to overfishing and tourism activities, as well as enhanced warming and acidification of the ocean induced by climate change. In order to preserve these sites, the WB would like to better understand their specific risk exposure and vulnerability.

Maps of Coral Reef habitat were produced by the University of Exeter, based in the UK, using optical and microwave data, and including ESA missions (e.g. Envisat, ERS). These maps contained quantitative information on a number of important factors influencing the coral’s health, such thermal stress regimes and wave exposure areas. Fig. 4 illustrates the components of the thermal stress, distinguishing between the “chronic” stress (measured as the climatological summer temperature average), and the “acute” stress (measured as the frequency of degree heating weeks) induced by prolonged elevated temperatures leading to bleaching events .

These habitat maps provided WB managers with a unique insight into the level and regional distribution of vulnerability of reef sites, helping them to better quantify the risk of bleaching associated with climate change (e.g. region of acute thermal stress), and overfishing activities. The EO information also provided users with insight into potential sites for reef re-breeding, in a more objective manner, thereby optimizing financial resources and maximizing the potential of related Ecosystem Services.

“Space-based observations are an essential element of climate monitoring in Latin America and a complement to ground-based stations,” said Walter Vergara, Lead Engineer-Latin America Environment Department at the World Bank. “ESA instruments and observation protocols are particularly applicable to the type of information that needs to be collected over time in the Americas.”

(4) Understanding subsidence risk of coastal cities in North Africa

This demonstration aims to better quantify land subsidence risks in Alexandria and Tunis, by use of a particular type of “Interferometric SAR” (InSAR) technique, known as the “Persistent Scatterer Interferometry” (PSI). The ground motion maps were derived by the PSI technique from Radar data (e.g. ESA’s Envisat, ERS and the Japanese ALOS) by two specialist companies; Altamira Information of Spain and TeleRilevamento Europea (TRE) of Italy. The maps were used to spot the regions at risks, and integrate the geological analysis of soils and earthquake risks, considered significant for Tunis.

The results of this study, obtained using InSAR technology, highlighted the regions of subsidence in Alexandria (e.g. border of the Mariut Lake and near the village of Idku) as well as regions of uplift of the ground in rural and urban areas. In the case of Tunis (Fig 5), the results highlighted subsidence in the central part of the city, built on reclaimed land. This EO-based information was used by the WB as an input to a wider study funded by the WB on the vulnerability and adaptation of coastal North African cities to climate change risks and natural hazards (Fig. 1 illustrates a workshop where the study methodology was presented).

“There is currently very little scientific evidence of the land subsidence taking place in the main cities of North Africa, and EO from space can help in assessing the risk by showing the local details in a regional context, highlighting hot spots of identified land motion and prompting experts and decision-makers to remedial actions for risk mitigation,” said Anthony G. Bigio, Senior urban specialist at the World Bank, in charge of the study for the Middle East and North African Region

Figure 5: Assessing land motion in Tunis City. SqueeSAR analysis of ERS ascending data identified more than 70000 measurement points, with a density of about 70 PS/km². For each point, the average rate of deformation and time history of movements were estimated. The colored markers, superimposed on the satellite image from Microsoft Virtual Earth, in each velocity field maps correspond to the measurement points identified in the AOI: positive values (blue) of the measured displacements indicate movement toward the satellite along its line of sight, suggesting an uplifting movement affecting the area, while negative values (red) indicate movement away from the sensor, that may attributed to a subsidence phenomena affecting the area. Courtesy TRE.

Development issues and Global Environmental Change issues are intrinsically linked, as the livelihoods of many people (particularly those in developing countries) are critically dependent on rapid changes in the environment and climate. The success of development projects increasingly depends on the ability of MDBs to effectively monitor changes in the environment, at the local and global scale in order to better mitigate or adapt to them.

A few small-scale projects, performed in partnership between the WB, EIB and ESA, were discussed here to illustrate the value of wide-area information from satellites to support MDB’s development activities across their life cycle: from appraisal and due diligence, to monitoring and post-evaluation of projects. Within this context, EO-based information has helped users to:

• Check rapidly the “Progress” and “Environmental Impact” of their projects, at the regional and global scale;
• Establish a “Baseline” from the satellite archive, against which “changes” can be detected and “Offset” measures can be determined;
• Identify “Hot Spot” regions, which would require further attention and field surveys;
• Support “Dialogue” with local stakeholders (often with divergent views) by putting environmental issues in a spatial context, in a consistent and objective manner.

The potential of Earth Observation satellites to assist MDBs is substantial and is likely to grow significantly with the new generation of satellite missions providing enhanced spectral, temporal and spatial capabilities. In particular, the availability of operational services will be improved through the ESA Sentinels missions to be launched from 2012 under the EC-ESA joint initiative for “Global Monitoring of Environment & Security” (GMES). In addition, a family of leading-edge scientific missions (Earth Explorers) are now being launched by ESA to measure key new parameters of the Earth system to better understand and quantify climate change.

Based on the initial successes, and in order to make full use of this growing potential, ESA is now initiating a more substantial and a wider range of EO service demonstrations tailored to the needs of MDBs.

The aim is to further raise awareness within the MDBs of the full capabilities of both European and Canadian EO missions (ESA and national), and providers of specialized EO services.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Willibald Croi (Luxspace Sarl) for his help during the projects and to the EO service providers for their products and comments.

Pierre-Philippe Mathieu (pierre.philippe.mathieu@esa.int) is an Earth Observation Applications Engineer in the Earth Observation Science & Applications Department of the European Space Agency in ESRIN (Frascati, Italy). He spent 10 years working in the field of environmental modelling, weather risk management and remote sensing. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and M.Sc from University of Liege (Belgium), a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Louvain (Belgium), and a Management degree from the University of Reading Business School (Uk).

Stephen Coulson (stephen.coulson@esa.int) has over 25 years experience in the field of Earth Observation and its applications, the last 20 of which have been with the European Space Agency. Since 2000, he has been managing an ESA program to support the development of the European EO services industry and is head of the Industry section in the Directorate of Earth Observation Programs in ESRIN (Frascati, Italy). He has a degree in physics from University of Durham (UK) and a Ph.D in theoretical physics from the University of Southampton (UK).

Cumulous cloud. Courtesy of Fotolia.

Lance McKee
Senior Staff Writer
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
+1 508-752-0108
lmckee@opengeospatial.org

This essay is a follow-on to my essay in the August 2010 issue of Earthzine, “18 Reasons for Open Publication of Geoscience Data.“¹ The premise of both is that science can be made more transparent and true to its principles through better use of Information Technology (IT) and a global infrastructure of technical standards that make it easy to publish, discover, assess and access data. This essay argues that in the geosciences, the necessary institutional commitment and technical standards are largely in place, but the standards’ availability and usefulness are not yet well known. As science fiction author William Gibson observed, “The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.”

Evidence Of Institutional Commitment

In the 24 August 2010 issue of EOS², in “Data Citation and Peer Review,” authors Parsons, Duerr and Minster argue that, “The scientific method and the credibility of science rely on full transparency and explicit references to both methods and data.”

Looking back a year, we see that the Geological Society of America (GSA), in its Open Data Access Position Statement³, adopted May 2005 and revised May 2009, “Strongly supports open access to scientific data by all purveyors of such data to promote advancement in research, support education, and improve the economic progress, health, and welfare of society.”

Eight years ago, the US National Academies’ 2002 “Geoscience Data and Collections: National Resources in Peril (2002)⁴” referenced the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) “Guidelines for Geoscience Data and Collections Preservation and Distribution,” whose “overall purpose and fundamental objective … is to ensure and facilitate full and open access to quality data for research and education in the Earth Sciences. These guidelines are considered to be a binding condition on all EAR-supported projects.”

We see from these examples that there has been an ongoing call for and official commitment to open publication of geoscience data. Progress is evident in programs like the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and OneGeology, through which national government agencies are beginning to share their data more openly. The EOS article cited above noted other efforts. Progress is also evident in the number of papers on this general subject that were presented at the recent IGARSS 2010 conference.⁵

The ocean observation community uses OGC Sensor Web Enablement standards.

Despite all of this, however, data created for most geoscience studies are unavailable, and most of the data that are available are difficult to find and use. In science as in other domains such as government, geospatial data are hard to discover and access for a number of reasons.⁶ Scientists and governments are still creating data in idiosyncratic and often complex data formats. Data have been and continue to be created in software-specific files and there is no guarantee that proprietary databases and database models will be maintained. Metadata, when provided, may be in non-standard schemas and may neglect important elements such as data dictionaries. Some obstacles are new: In the emerging world of service-oriented IT architectures, web-service derived results are ephemeral and typically lack any record of provenance, including service history. (Open standards for tracking geospatial data provenance in a Web services environment do not yet exist.)

To repeat from Parsons, Duerr and Minster: “The scientific method and the credibility of science rely on full transparency and explicit references to both methods and data.” “Climategate,” as well as the simple fact that most geoscience data are not available, suggest that, frustrated by the difficulties summarized above, scientists and the institutions of science have failed to provide the transparency that good science and credibility require.

Today’s Technical Standards Overcome Interoperability Obstacles

The concept of ”open science” involves scientists and researchers publishing, discovering, assessing and accessing not only research reports, but also the data and computation on which research findings are based. Current technology has the capacity to meet these functional requirements but only when the technologies implement existing open software interface and data encoding standards that allow the technologies to interoperate within a worldwide system.

Free and open standards, like TCP/IP and HTTP, encourage innovation and rapid acceptance, resulting in expanded networks of communication and sharing. Users and providers of geospatial technologies and data have been cooperating since 1994 in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)⁷ to develop free and open standards that enable communication between different geoprocessing systems from different vendors and of different types: GIS, Earth imaging systems, navigation systems, location services, sensor webs, databases, etc. Requirements have come from a wide range of stakeholders, resulting in a framework of open standards that enable, among other things, Web-based applications for publishing, discovering, assessing and accessing geoscientific data and computational resources.

Icerberg cleavage. Courtesy of Fotolia.

Implementations of the CSW standard make possible fine-grained searches of many kinds. For example, a wildlife biologist studying ducks in Canada might publish data that happen to include water temperature readings at certain locations. Years later (if the metadata included basic information about the temperature readings), a hydrologist searching for historical surface water temperature data in that region could easily discover this data, along with information about when and how the data were collected. Metadata tools, some free and open source⁹, are already available that streamline the creation of such metadata, and open source software code is available that streamlines implementation of CSW by software developers.

It is important for scientists to begin thinking in terms of Web services rather than file-based computing. Google Maps, for example, is a service offered over the Internet, enabled by the Web. A query returns useful information and little is required of the user in terms of expertise or hardware and software. Wolfram Alpha¹⁰ is perhaps a better example, because it is a Web service that provides sophisticated analytical capabilities that operate on many different kinds of data available from government agencies and other sources. The point is that both distributed data and diverse software services can be “in the cloud,” and this rapidly advancing paradigm promises to revolutionize the geosciences.

OGC Web Services standards specify the open interfaces and encodings necessary for building open Web services that provide access to virtually any kind of vector or raster data as well as processing functions that use that data. OGC Sensor Web Enablement standards¹¹ enable developers to make any Web-accessible sensor and/or sensor data repository discoverable, accessible and useable via the Web. This includes Earth observation sensors. Many, but not all, of the standards necessary for chaining of Web services, as in climate models, for example, are available. Others are in development.

Some geoscience communities, notably those involved in hydrology¹² and in meteorology and ocean observation¹³, have begun working in OGC Technical Committee working groups to facilitate their data sharing efforts based on these standards. Typically, this IT standards activity builds on prior data coordination efforts. Other OGC working groups¹⁴ focus on topics such as data preservation, geospatial rights management, data quality, geosemantics and workflow, all of which have significance for open science.

Wildlfire in the Amazon. Courtesy of Fotolia.

This brief discussion of standards leaves many important questions unanswered, such as: What is to be done with currently available data and services on the Web that do not implement standards? How will researchers’ data dictionaries be coordinated for cross-disciplinary studies? How much metadata expertise will be required of scientists, and will each data producer produce their own metadata?

A key question is “Who will pay for this?” David Hastings, creator of the Human Security Index, in a comment on my August Earthzine article, noted, “Geoscience Australia, formerly using the long-established restrictive Crown Copyright, now protects its intellectual property via the 21st century approach of Creative Commons licensing.” Will Geoscience Australia’s embrace of Creative Commons licensing become the norm or remain the exception? Standards from the OGC and other standards organizations provide much of the infrastructure for a market in proprietary scientific information. The market is important, because curation is essential but not free, and governments will almost certainly not pay all the costs. Someone has to review data and edit and index the literature; maintain the information in readable form, and keep it online as platforms change; and promulgate the use of specific standards. Technical standards will be necessary in Web-mediated management of privacy, liability and intellectual property, as well as professional attribution, a main currency of science.

Such questions require institutional responses. Technological change induces institutional change, but can the pace of institutional change keep up with the pace of technological change? Search companies and social networking companies, not geoscience institutions, are the main innovators in “data science”¹⁵, which focuses on turning massive datasets and data streams into information products. The institutions of science will need to imagine challenging scenarios. For example, what will be the result of millions, and soon billions, of sensor-packed cell phones, automobiles and buildings streaming location-specific environmental data into public repositories? What if these streams of data and associated, increasingly capable and publicly available cloud services result in a surge of citizen science? How will data integrity be addressed in this scenario?

We can expect funding institutions, publishers, scientific associations, universities and scientists themselves to develop new policies, behaviors, business models, funding propositions, and long-term data curation solutions. This will happen partly in response to new capabilities enabled by new technologies and technical standards, and partly in response to social, economic and political factors.

We know that none of this “just happens.” Each step depends on people making decisions and taking actions. The third article in this series will consider some of the risks and opportunities that will figure in such decisions.

References

¹ “http://www.earthzine.org/2010/08/04/18-reasons-for-open-publication-of-geoscience-data/.
² Transactions, American Geophysical Union http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010EO340001.shtml
³ http://www.geosociety.org/positions/pos7_dataOA.pdf
⁴ http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10348
⁵ Geoscience Depends on Geospatial Information Standards, Siri Jodha Khalsa and George Percivall. In the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter, December 2010. http://www.grss-ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/12.10.pdf
⁶ Preserving Geospatial Data: Challenges and Opportunities, Steven P. Morris
In the Proceedings Indo-US Workshop on International Trends in Digital Preservation, March 24-25, 2009.
⁷ http://www.opengeospatial.org
⁸ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geospatial_metadata
⁹ http://www.oceanteacher.org/OTMediawiki/index.php/Metadata_Tools
¹⁰ http://www.wolframalpha.com/
¹¹ http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe
¹² http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/hydrologydwg
¹³ http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/meteodwg
¹⁴ http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg
¹⁵ “What is data science?” Mike Loukides, O’Reilly Radar
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/what-is-data-science.html

Lance McKee was on the startup team of the OGC in 1994 and currently serves as Senior Staff Writer. Over the years he has served on local not-for-profits (in Worcester, Massachusetts) and written to promote awareness of issues involving climate, energy and watershed awareness. His interests include the evolving use of information technology in science.

First Place $500 — Earthships As An Affordable, Sustainable Part Of Vernacular Architecture by Nikolaos Meintanis, University of Sussex, England

Second Place $350 — Industrial Ecology: A Promising Approach to Attain Sustainability by John Paul Sipin De Guzman, National Cheng Chung University, Taiwan

Third Place $225 — Responsible Citizenship: In the Wake of Charles Darwin by Benjamin-Axel Mugema of Makera University, Uganda

Fourth Place $125 — Lead By Example by M. Injamam Alam, Institute of Business Administration, University of Dahka, Bangladesh

Each winner will also receive an Earthzine t-shirt and letter of recognition to their universities.

“The contestants submitted thoughtful, well-written and well argued essays. The contest’s objective to create international discourse among students on important environmental issues was met by the lively thought-provoking comments, questions and responses posted on the contest blog,” said Dr. David Mullins, Associate Editor for Education.

“We are deeply appreciative of the efforts of all the contestants. Our thanks also go to the judges, who ranked the winners on the basis of their essays and the quality of their blogs. We are grateful to the NASA Applied Sciences Program for supporting this contest, and to Dr. Mullins, for doing an excellent job managing Earthzine’s second essay competition,” said Dr. Paul Racette begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Editor-in-Chief.