Posts

This is a screencast of my talk the Adaptation Futures conference in Arizona last month. I present our GAIN Index to measure the vulnerability of countries to face Adaptation challenges, and their readiness to implement solutions. Beyond the Index, I tried to stress the importance of the whole package: It is not about making good science, it is not just an academic exercise. From the beginning one needs to think who will be the users, what do they know and what they want to know, and how are you going to present it. ...

Earlier this month my NGO (GAIN) had its annual meeting. Around 200 participants, which includes several presidents, CEOs, ambassadors and representatives of the World Bank, OAS, and more than 100 companies. The invitation list to the reception had more than 1,000 names. I built the Invitation system almost from scratch using Google Apps Script (GAS), and I want to share the experience. The decision to engage on this was partly because I had the chance to participate on a free and open event about GAS for developers at the Google Washington DC offices (thank you!). ...

A Russian satellite makes a time lapse of the Earth from space. A truly beautiful video. This reminds me of a text I read many years ago: Carl Sagan was defending the inclusion of visual cameras in scientific payloads, even when the scientific value would be arguable. Researchers were complaining about the extra weight and limited value, and longevity, of such an instrument, versus the many other things they could put there to measure wind speed, chemical composition, … ...

This idea is for a synthetic multi-beam microphone, basically allowing to select and amplify sound coming from any, and all, selectable angles and distances, at once, live or replaying the sound, and to detect their LOS velocity. Combined with a speaker, it can be a multi-beam sonar.Physically it would be an array of microphones, as the size of the lattice would define part of the resolution. The rest would come from the software. I thought of this by merging concepts from sounds, nets, radio astronomy, and optical interferometry. ...

It’s roughly a year since we made it to the Finalists to the Apps for Development competition of the World Bank. To commemorate the date, the Bank prepared an article to assess the impact. They contacted all finalists and made a little interview (Here is the full interview with our team). I was fascinated with the idea and eager to read the outcome. With all finalists, we share a Facebook group so we are more able to keep track of each other’s whereabouts. I do see being finalists was very positive personally and professionally for all of us. But I was also interested on the impact for all those non-finalists. Many of them jumped into the Open Data portal to participate. Are they still engaged? Was participation incentive enough to continue developing in the area? Are they likely to participate again? Unfortunately none of these questions was answered. ...

Hace unos días estuve en la Habana, Cuba, con mi padre de vacaciones. Tenía muchas ganas de ir, y aprender. Me preguntaba ¿Qué es lo que opina el cubano de la calle? ¿Qué es el régimen revolucionario, en términos reales? ¿Cómo es el sector privado allí? ¿Qué no se puede hacer? ¿Que beneficios tiene un sistema comunista? ... Esto es lo que he podido medio entender después de una semana de vacaciones allí, charlando con cubanos, viviendo en un apartamento alquilado, yendo a varias ciudades en las afueras (Mariel y Viñales), visitando un hospital, una universidad, un conservatorio, varias casas particulares... ...

[Cross posted at GAIN] Engineers will be among those on the front lines of adaptation. From improving the resilience of water pipes and energy transport systems to redesigning how entire urban areas are built, engineering firms will need to solve new challenges created by population growth, urbanization and climate change. Incorporation of new scientific, economic and social science data is becoming more critical as unprecedented changes are upon us. Engineering innovation and technology will be part of the solution. These were the main takeaways according to participants at the Engineers Without Borders (EWB)–USA 10-year anniversary International Conference in Henderson, Nev., March 22-24. ...

The cost of ending hunger globally is less than the value of wasted food only in the US, and orders of magnitude smaller than the Wall Street bailout. "The world only needs 30 billion dollars a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger." FAO Newsroom. 2008 "14-15 per cent of United States edible food is untouched or unopened, amounting to $43 billion worth of discarded, but edible, food". Wikipedia quoting a study by the University of Arizona in 2004 ...

It is roughly one year since I joined GAIN, the Global Adaptation Institute. GAIN is dedicated to facilitate data-driven pragmatic solutions to face the challenge of adaptation to climate change. You can learn more about us here, or about my role here. One year seems a nice excuse to stop and think about what one has done and evaluate where to improve. I am very thankful to the Institute for giving me the opportunity to work on such an important topic with amazing people. I think we have lots to celebrate and be proud of. Motivation has been and is the main engine for this journey. ...

Today I went to a lunch meeting with the Apps 4 Climate folks. It is basically a challenge for developers to make apps using the vast archive of open data at the Bank. It was great to see such a motivated team behind the project. We talked about the challenge itself, requirements and timelines. It was very appropriate for Habiba Gitay to point out the importance of rightful sourcing attribution (most times the Bank acts as a portal that archives someone else’s data). Alex Barth also gave a talk about building maps with World Bank Climate Data (slides here). ...