The last few years have seen a substantial rise in geographic and environmental data, with projects such as Geo-Wiki using satellite data to further our understanding of deforestation.
The Geo-Wiki team has been setup by the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) to try and provide a more accurate view on the world’s forests.
The output from their project has recently been published as a series of maps in the Remote Sensing of the Environment journal, but are also freely available on the Geo-Wiki website.
Unifying data
The efforts of Geo-Wiki underline both the potential and the challenges facing climate and environmental data, and highlight why the Institute for Environmental Analytics (IEA) is so important.
Extreme weather events are becoming more commonplace, and it’s estimated that the cost of adapting to them will rise to around $70-100 billion by 2030. The impacts of extreme weather events has been felt only too keenly in the UK in recent weeks as flooding has generated significant financial and human costs.
The IEA was created in January 2016 courtesy of a grant from the HEFCE Catalyst Fund to try and tackle the gap that exists between academic excellence and commercial exploitation. This gap is perpetuated by the lack of skills to help translate research into innovation.
The IEA aims to develop both the skills and the technologies to ensure that the latest environmental research is translated into commercial solutions that benefit the economy.
You can learn more about the institute via the link above or via the video below.
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