Back to the web Why spatial matters in the fight against climate change. 12th November 2020 Data Science and GIS go hand in hand against climate change. Camellia Williams, Lead Writer. You can also read this blog on Medium. The problems we work on — like climate change and biodiversity loss — are transcendent. There’s no single solution to these problems, so we must bring together different communities and fields of work to find them. At CARTO’s Spatial Data Science Conference 2020 (SDSC20), Vizzuality’s Greta Carrete Vega and Luisa Teixeira discussed how Data Science and GIS go hand in hand in the fight against climate change. To prepare for SDSC20, Greta and Luisa gathered some of our data science and GIS experts to talk about our own experiences of two disciplines working together. The group realised that their diverse range of backgrounds and experiences means they can see things from different perspectives and challenge each other’s biases. Different views can complement each other, and shine light into our dark spots. When it comes to problems as big as climate change, having the space to talk and understand the changing issues is important. CARTO’s SDSC20 is one of those places. As Greta and Luisa say in the discussion, we (as individuals) cannot learn everything. We can’t be the repository of all knowledge. We can’t know everything. Therefore you need a team around you, and you need to be inclusive of all the skills and experiences people have to offer. If we work in the spaces where problems intersect, that’s where we’ll find our solutions. Hear the full discussion in this YouTube video. Listen to the end for advice from Greta on how to get started in spatial data science. Curious to see more examples of different disciplines working together? Maybe you’ll like this blog about our designers and user researchers working together with the Resource Watch team to redesign the platform’s ‘Explore’ page. Welcome, Pablo! 5th November 2020 Pablo is the first person to join Vizzuality since the Nueva Normalidad began. Now that we’ve switched from remote-friendly to fully-remote, there’s no real life introductions (or beers in Calvin’s) but that hasn’t stopped Pablo from meeting all his teammates. A completely revised onboarding programme developed by our People & Culture aims to keep us all connected, even when we’re apart. Joining us from a creative communication consultancy, Pablo is an experienced Project Manager. He works with our team and our clients to successfully achieve their goals, and find new needs and problems to be solved. Perhaps it’s his ability to listen and ask questions, or his positive attitude, but he’s quickly settling into his role. Pablo has already taken the lead on important projects and contributed to our internal transition towards self-organisation. Pablo has experience in Inbound Marketing Strategies and UX/Ui design, a degree in Biological Sciences, and a Masters in Digital Marketing and Social Media Strategies. He loves to learn something new all the time. A few months ago he took some time to learn about interior design and plants. He loves to study photography too. Pablo spends a lot of his time playing sport, and he used to earn a living scuba diving. For Pablo, working with Vizzuality is an opportunity to surf the wave of digital transformation in sustainability communication and visualization. Roused by his curious mind and eagerness to learn, we’re excited to see what this could mean for us, our clients and the success of global efforts to make sustainable choices the norm. Welcome to the team, Pablo! American fires. 21th September 2020 Record-breaking wildfires are burning in the USA — again. Sometimes, it seems to me that extreme wildfires are a recurring theme in our global headlines. Australia. Brazil. California. But why? Is what we’re seeing unusual? Or are we seeing a pattern that will repeat itself if we fail to act on climate change? To understand what’s happening and how it affects our society, we need data. And for that we have access to open data platforms. Through these platforms we can stay informed, predict the future, and make plans to protect the things we love. Using Global Forest Watch, Resource Watch, and PREPdata to explore the data, it’s clear that this year’s fires in the USA are worse than normal. And what’s more, there are signs that things could get worse. Read the full blog on Medium. This widget compares the number of cumulative VIIRS fire alerts in 2020 to 2018 — and shows that the number of fire alerts recorded in 2020 will likely pass the number recorded in 2018. The map on the right shows the location of all fire alerts in the past three months. Source: Global Forest Watch, accessed 21 September 2020 https://gfw.global/35TjboJ. Remote workshops for (a) change. 14th August 2020 Oscar Esbri. Scientist. At Vizzuality, we regularly have workshops with our partners at different project stages to meet, align, share ideas, and design work plans. However, travel restrictions have made us adapt to the new normality and make all of our workshops fully remote. As we cancelled our flights and revised our agendas for two in-person workshops originally planned for March, we realised that all the activities we had planned did not translate well into a virtual world. So when we re-designed the workshops, we didn’t seek normality. We simply adapted to the new situation with the tools and knowledge available to make the most of our remote collaborative work. Read our advice on how to organise an online remote-first workshop on Medium. Mangrove deforestation alerts available for the first time. 11th August 2020 Camellia Williams, Lead Writer, Vizzuality. For the first time, data on mangrove deforestation, carbon storage and coastline protection are easily and freely accessible online. Global Mangrove Watch — a mapping platform — highlights the importance of mangroves and provides the data that are needed to inform conservation and restoration planning. With this information, decisions can be made to mitigate climate change and protect the livelihoods of billions of people who live in, and depend on, coastal areas. Global Mangrove Watch explores the science behind remote sensing. Scientists from Aberystwyth University, soloEO, Wetlands International and The Nature Conservancy and a host of other partners joined together to provide the data. We were asked to design and build the platform, and provide Scientific support. Read the rest of this blog on Medium. Map showing the extent of mangroves in Indonesia. Image from Global Mangrove Watch. Playing with fires. 5th August 2020 Adam Pain, Scientist. Wildfires are a hot topic right now. Last year it was California, Australia and Brazil making headlines. Bolivia too was struggling to slow the spread of forest fires across its Protected Areas. This summer we’ve seen huge swaths of forest lost in Arctic Siberia as well as record-breaking fires scarily close to urban zones in Arizona. With global temperatures rising each year and precipitation patterns becoming more extreme, it’s clear that the monitoring of fires will play an increasingly important role in protecting our forests. So to that end, Global Forest Watch (GFW) has released a suite of new widgets to give users a sharper set of tools to monitor and analyse fires as they happen. I want to walk you through the new capabilities and show you some of the things you can do with them. Let’s take a look at some specific examples that are fresh in our memories. Read the full blog on Medium. How we made Resource Watch even easier to use. 15th July 2020 Camellia Williams, Lead Writer. Design and user research go hand in hand when it comes to product development. Both are essential if you want to make a product that is useful, usable, and used. We’ve been working with the Resource Watch team at World Resources Institute (WRI) on a redesign that makes planetary data easier to use. I spoke with Dani Caso (Designer) and Martin Dubuisson (User Researcher) to find out more. Read the blog on Medium! Welcome, Tamara! 14th July 2020 Scuba diving is one of the major reasons why Tamara, a Scientist who joined our team in December 2019, took an interest in marine biology. She was captivated by the diversity of life underwater and their evolutionary adaptations. Tamara joined our team shortly before her wonderful daughter Maya arrived in the world. For Tamara, the weeks before her maternity leave were a great opportunity to familiarise herself with all our projects and ways of working. Now she’s back, she’s jumped right into her project work, including the Half-Earth Project. Tamara’s role is to provide high quality data analysis that can be applied in purposeful ways. Tamara’s excited by the prospect of working on products that promote changes in our society and address environmental challenges. She’s also excited to work with all the different disciplines our team represents—designers, developers, and researchers—and learning from our multidisciplinary approach. Before she joined us, Tamara was a Scientist working in academia. Firstly in the Atlantic Ocean in Spain and then in the Red Sea with a Postdoctoral fellow at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. She has two Masters: one in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation; and a second in Secondary Education Teaching. Tamara’s also on the cusp of finishing a third Masters degree in Big Data and Science. Coupled with her PhD in Biogeosciences, this combination of studies has developed Tamara’s skills in communicating science and helping others understand complex topics. As you might expect from someone who’s studied the ocean, Tamara is a big fan of outdoor activities, especially scuba diving and hiking. From coral reefs to caves she feels very comfortable in the underwater peace and silence. Each place has its own special little things. Tamara also loves to take four day hikes, camping out under the stars and carrying nothing more than the things on her back. Welcome to the team, Tamara! Tamara, a coral-loving marine Scientist. Have better online discussions. 13th July 2020 AJ Pain, Scientist. A few months ago, Vizzuality’s Science Team switched our weekly in-person meetings to full-remote. After noticing that online discussions don’t always flow as well as in-person conversations, we decided to reflect on how things are working. We’d be terrible Scientists if we didn’t measure things! So, a couple of weeks ago we sent a survey to every person in the Science Team. We asked for their thoughts and feelings on the state of discussions, team spirit, load balancing, and team direction in light of these changes. Over the next weeks and months we plan to take a deeper dive into each of these themes. As we do, we’ll evolve the way we do things now we are fully remote. This week the focus was discussions. After highlighting the issues we face, we identified four ways to make our online discussions better. Read the rest of the blog on Medium. Photo by Alphacolor on Unsplash. Bolivia burned while the world watched Brazil. 9th June 2020 The Amazon was on fire. Now we know how much was lost. Camellia Williams, Lead Writer, Vizzuality. In August 2019 the world’s eyes were focused on Brazil. The Amazon was on fire and social media was burning up in indignation. The data available at the time told us how many fires there were, but they couldn’t tell us how much forest had been lost. Today, we can finally answer that question. The release of the 2019 tree cover loss data from Global Forest Watch reveals the data we’ve been waiting for. Global overview. In 2019, we lost 3.8 million hectares of primary forest — the equivalent of losing one football pitch of primary rainforest every six seconds for the entire year. 2019 was the third-highest year of primary forest loss since the turn of the century. Global primary forest loss and total forest loss remain stubbornly high despite decades-long efforts to reduce global deforestation. Graphic created by Vizzuality using: Tree Cover Loss (Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/NASA). Accessed 3 June 2019. Read the rest of the blog on Medium. Next All projects About Twitter Github Contact × projectsaboutcontact