Scientists at Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) remain active in a number of different scientific communities, despite travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 27, at the virtual meeting of the European Geophysical Union, Martin Juckes, co-manager of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center (DDC), presented a lightning presentation and poster paper, "IPCC Data Distribution Centre: FAIR Data from Climate Research to Mitigation Policy." Robert Chen and information scientist Xiaoshi Xing were co-authors. CIESIN is one of four organizations that jointly operate DDC; the other three are based in the UK, Germany, and Spain. The IPCC DDC provides access to key data sets used in IPCC assessments and reports. Also participating was Robert Downs, CIESIN senior digital archivist, who co-authored the presentation, "Towards Developing Community Guidelines for Sharing and Reusing Quality Information of Earth Science Datasets," given by Carlo Lacagnina, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre.
Senior digital archivist Robert Downs participated virtually in the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 17th Plenary Meeting (RDA P17) April 20–23 and the 16th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC21) on April 19, both coordinated from Edinburgh, Scotland. During RDA P17, Downs presented the poster, "Peer Review of Open Research Data: The Approach of a Scientific Data Center" He also chaired the joint session, "Collaborating to Improve Platforms and Share Resources among Open Data Repositories," where he presented, "Improving Repositories through Collaboration." At the IDCC21, Downs gave the presentation, "Documentation to Foster Sharing and Use of Open Earth Science Data: Quality Information," co-authored with Ge Peng of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, David Moroni of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hampapuram Ramapriyan of Science Systems and Applications, Inc., and Yaxing Wei of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
As part of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) seminar on April 20, CIESIN postdoctoral research scientist Carolynne Hultquist gave the presentation, "Bringing Vulnerable Populations into the Flood Risk Equation." Two graduate student interns also participated: Raychell Velez, who is working toward her MS in geographic information systems (GIS) at Lehman College of the City University of New York; and Colleen Neely, an MPA student in environmental science and policy at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Hultquist gave an overview of relevant data and services from NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and described ongoing efforts to improve vulnerability data for flood risk assessment. Velez presented work supported by SEDAC to develop high resolution data on building exposure to floods using artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. Neely, an Earth Institute intern with Hultquist, and IRI scientist Andrew Kruczkiewicz discussed work on a high resolution flood vulnerability index for Houston, Texas, designed to support more equitable flood mitigation efforts.