January 30, 2008
Clark Labs 'Early Warning' project for global health security receives $1.2M grant
Project to aid global food, health and ecosystem security
WORCESTER, MA—Clark Labs, a world leader in GIS and image processing software, has received a grant of over $1.2 million to research the potential for a climate teleconnection-based early warning system for food, health and ecosystem security.
Image, above: Two geographic modes of the El Nino phenomenon as revealed in an analysis of nomalies in sea surface temperature. The analysis was done using a new image time series analysis suite currently being developed by Clark Labs.
Jointly funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (www.moore.org) and Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, (www.google.org), the project will investigate the relationship between climate teleconnections and problematic climatic episodes that lead to crop failures, infectious disease outbreaks and ecosystem disruptions such as fire. Teleconnections refer to a linkage between climate changes over widely separated regions of the earth. The best known of these is the quasi-oscillatory El Niño/La Niña phenomenon where anomalous sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific lead to widespread climate impacts with durations that can span from months to a year or more. Other notable teleconnection events with widespread impacts include the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The Early Warning System project will focus on the geography of teleconnection impacts, their tendency to follow prototypical patterns and the degree to which leading indicators (precursor patterns) exist that will allow a short term (3- to 6-month) warning of their likely impact pattern. Integration with numerical climate teleconnection forecasts will also be explored, as will the ability to serve this information publicly in an ongoing and timely manner.
Partner organizations that will assist or advise in this research effort include the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies group (GIMMS) at NASA (gimms.gsfc.nasa.gov) and the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) (www.esri.com).
J. Ronald Eastman, Director of Clark Labs, Professor of Geography and the Landry University Professor, is principal investigator of the project.
According to Nancy Budwig, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Eastman is at the forefront of transforming how scientists conceptualize the role of visualization tools in thinking about climate issues while simultaneously using these tools to solve pressing problems. Use-inspired work like Eastman's path-breaking project is central to Clark’s research mission (www.clarku.edu/clarkresearch).
Clark Labs is known for pioneering advancements in areas such as decision support, uncertainty management, classifier development, change and time series analysis, and dynamic modeling. Partnering with several esteemed organizations, Clark Labs leverages its academic base to develop innovative and customized research tools, provide software solutions to organizations in need and apply geospatial expertise to a range of real-world problems. For more about Clark Labs, visit www.clarklabs.org/.