Geovisualization is an emerging field that draws upon approaches from several disciplines such as cartography, information and scientific visualization, and geographic information systems (GIS) to provide theories, tools, and methods for the presentation of geographic—or spatial—data. In some cases this may mean creating data with coordinates from global positioning systems (GPS) and then using the established methods and tools to display them in print or digital form.
Shadrock Roberts
When a crisis strikes, imagery of the affected areas—anything as basic as a road map or as complex as the spread of contamination in connected waterways—are needed within seconds. In these situations, aid workers and emergency responders do not have time to evaluate all possible datasets in a given area to generate such geospatial visualizations.
USAID's climate change program is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that result from the way land resources are managed. Destructive logging, forest fires, agricultural expansion, and conversion to pastureland contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere each year.
Looking for a more creative way to tell the stories of relief, recovery, and development, USAID—and in particular, the parts of the Agency that work in political transition and disaster response environments—have turned to such mapmakers and developed Geographic Information Units (GIU), expert teams of geospatial data analysts. The new USAID Geospatial Center is building on this foundation to increase spatial mapping capacity Agency-wide. The Agency uses cutting-edge technology to not only provide locations where USAID and other development organizations are working, but to better analyze its work.
Sven Lindholm and Chad Blevins
From our seminal role in introducing oral rehydration therapies, to promoting the eradication of polio and smallpox, to launching the "Green Revolution," the Agency boasts a storied legacy of science and technology accomplishments. This is a technical agency at its core, where science helps us characterize the challenges we face as a global community, or provides tools and research to address them.
Alex Dehgan
The development lexicon is abuzz about innovation—which is quickly getting top billing on development blogs and digital bulletin boards. Innovation is also the focus of high-level Organization for Economic Development (OECD) ministerial meetings, World Bank reports and UNESCO workshops. And it is a key pillar of USAID Forward, the Agency's reform campaign.
Steven Gale
In 1999, the Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative was founded by local scientists with the goal of developing a vaccine that would block infection of the strain of HIV most prevalent in Kenya. Just over a decade later, the USAID-funded and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative-supported center has established itself as a model for developing country research institutions, capable of rigorously and ethically evaluating AIDS vaccine candidates and playing a crucial role in the global quest for the vaccine.
Helen Thomson
In his office in Kazakhstan's National Tuberculosis Institute, Dr. Shakimurat Ismoilov is quick to recall his latest encounter with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB)—the country's fastest growing and most dangerous epidemic.
Taylor Briggs
In 2010, lead scientist Michael Steckler of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and his colleagues—including several from other U.S. universities—received a five-year, multi-million dollar award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a project to expand their research on geology and geohazards in Bangladesh.
Staff
Since March 2010, a unique partnership led by USAID, NASA, Nike Inc., and the State Department has sought out and supported innovators and their creative technologies to help address major development issues.
Staff
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a series of Grand Challenges in Global Health. The challenges were a "call for a specific scientific or technological innovation that would remove a critical barrier to solving an important health problem in the developing world with a high likelihood of global impact and feasibility."
Steven Gale
Avian influenza may have escaped the frightening headlines of the last few years, but it is far too early to turn the page on bird flu. Just ask the scientists in Vietnam. Right now they have their hands full figuring out how to beat back a vaccine-resistant strain of virus currently killing chickens and ducks in scattered pockets of the north.
Richard Nyberg
The aim of development should be to improve human well-being in all of its major dimensions—not only the economic one but also environment and health, personal and national security, and civil society. The aim of sustainable development should be to achieve these gains in ways consistent with maintaining the improvements indefinitely.
John P. Holdren
In Africa today, USAID is focused on ending malaria, preventing HIV/AIDS transmission, and curbing other infectious disease like tuberculosis, avian influenza, and neglected tropical diseases. But, over the next decade, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases—with common risk factors such as tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and over consumption of fat-rich diets—will be the next major health challenges facing the continent, said African ministers of health at a meeting in Brazzaville, Congo, this past April. What was their rallying cry? "Unite against NCDs, the time to act is now."
Steve Gale
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, an international non-profit with a mission to promote, defend and support science as method to improve humankind.
Like many geographers working in international development, Ed Carr is skilled in a range of disciplines, worrying deeply about the relationship between science and society—or, as it might be phrased by the development community – between the research world that academics inhabit and "the real world" with which development practitioners contend.
Anthony Bebbington
