I’m a data scientist I can say that with
impunity because no one knows what that
means I don’t even really know what it
means honestly my working definition for
nothing else than just self-preservation
is that data science is the practice of
denim unike ting patterns from within
from within data it’s the broad
discipline of parsing signal from noise
and it’s so broad in fact that their
data scientists everywhere they’re in
healthcare online advertising even
policing anywhere that data can be used
in order to inform decisions or change
behavior me I work with environmental
data I work with data on forests and
oceans on water and weather any data
that can be used to help identify better
ways more sustainable ways in which to
use our natural resources I’m
particularly proud of a project that I
helped to work on and help to start
about 10 years ago called global forest
watch global forest watch is a was
conceived as an open-source platform to
identify deforestation in near-real-time
using satellite imagery it distills
petabytes of information to get to
something that we can actually
understand and use for example country
reports by country deforestation by
country for example in Indonesia or even
something more detailed like the way
deforestation moves across the landscape
pixel by pixel here you can see
deforestation as it marches through the
Amazon you know it’s scary but but you
get it you can immediately get it even
though this information originated from
a tiny piece of hardware that sits 400
miles above the Earth’s surface the data
and this project it just translates a
lot of disparate and esoteric data
sources into something meaningful and
actionable there are a lot of data
source a lot of projects that are like
this now
they monitor snow fish water and all are
very necessary and they’re necessary to
craft environmental policy because you
can’t change what you can’t see but none
of them are sufficient more than just
understanding what’s going on in the
world we need to understand why it’s
happening in order to design policy that
sticks you know it’s the difficult part
however is is that is that understanding
why things are happening the mechanisms
for change in the environment that that
depends on on local history and culture
and politics and me as a data scientist
sitting in San Francisco removed from
reality I can’t train a computer to find
out why deforestation is occurring in
the in the remote forests of Borneo
there is no global sensor for local and
centers that that those words don’t even
make any sense let alone the concept
behind them so my only hope is to
empower those that actually do know why
things are happening who can
contextualize this environmental change
as part of a broader narrative here’s an
example this is an extension off of the
global forest watch data this is a map
where each dot represents a point where
people there were users of GFW left the
site that is this is where they were
looking when they left it’s the last
thing that they saw it’s the forest that
they were most interested in or at least
what threw them off the site there are
clusters of activity and interest
everywhere across this whole map but I
found one in particular in Peru that
that was inside of a United Nations
protected area why for example were
people looking at this particular place
how do they know to look there well I
have no idea I still don’t know however
I did pull this image from a saddle from
a commercial satellite provider which
shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that
there was there was gold mining in this
protected area
yeah this is this is a this is powerful
just to be able to sort of identify and
see why this is happening and again I
don’t really know why this is happening
but I do know that the people who knew
to look in this area they probably do
know why it was happening they do they
can contextualize this and took in terms
of the broader narrative that includes
indigenous property rights that includes
local politics and gets us much closer
to a solution my best bet here is to
affect change in this area as to empower
these change makers I just sit behind a
computer screen
but what I can do is I can match those
users to content that’s actionable
incredible something that they can
actually use to affect that change the
idea here is that this is targeted
content that we can use and for a better
outcomes so I’m not sure if you’ve ever
heard of precision medicine but this is
very similar to precision
environmentalism the idea that that
targeted content can actually create
change in other ways that that couldn’t
have existed before and I’m doubling
down on this interaction there are
thousands of stories like this every
week the world is big and it’s
constantly changing there are stories
about algal blooms and melting snowpack
and and solar installations all of which
can be materially enhanced by satellite
imagery this is a low cost source of of
credible consistent and compelling
information about our earth and our
planet and our environment I’m now
working on a project called overview
media which seeks to deliver this
imagery to journalists people who are
telling stories about environmental and
humanitarian events it is in effect a
news wire an environmental news wire
from space this imagery isn’t just
relevant though it is beautiful this
data is beautiful these particular
images were captured and produced by
damos imaging a Spanish company now one
of about a hundred image providers
globally this industry though was
created around enterprise customers like
the
Department of Defense it wasn’t created
for normal people it wasn’t created for
consumers so there’s plenty of room for
artistry and and just pure art to help
convert this information into into
something that evokes an emotional
response overview media is is part of a
new class of environmentalism it it’s
it’s at the it’s at the fore it’s really
cool it’s at the forefront it’s at the
cutting edge and this combination of
data science design and storytelling has
the greatest potential for truly
scalable impact in the environment and
very happy to be a part of it thank you
you
impunity because no one knows what that
means I don’t even really know what it
means honestly my working definition for
nothing else than just self-preservation
is that data science is the practice of
denim unike ting patterns from within
from within data it’s the broad
discipline of parsing signal from noise
and it’s so broad in fact that their
data scientists everywhere they’re in
healthcare online advertising even
policing anywhere that data can be used
in order to inform decisions or change
behavior me I work with environmental
data I work with data on forests and
oceans on water and weather any data
that can be used to help identify better
ways more sustainable ways in which to
use our natural resources I’m
particularly proud of a project that I
helped to work on and help to start
about 10 years ago called global forest
watch global forest watch is a was
conceived as an open-source platform to
identify deforestation in near-real-time
using satellite imagery it distills
petabytes of information to get to
something that we can actually
understand and use for example country
reports by country deforestation by
country for example in Indonesia or even
something more detailed like the way
deforestation moves across the landscape
pixel by pixel here you can see
deforestation as it marches through the
Amazon you know it’s scary but but you
get it you can immediately get it even
though this information originated from
a tiny piece of hardware that sits 400
miles above the Earth’s surface the data
and this project it just translates a
lot of disparate and esoteric data
sources into something meaningful and
actionable there are a lot of data
source a lot of projects that are like
this now
they monitor snow fish water and all are
very necessary and they’re necessary to
craft environmental policy because you
can’t change what you can’t see but none
of them are sufficient more than just
understanding what’s going on in the
world we need to understand why it’s
happening in order to design policy that
sticks you know it’s the difficult part
however is is that is that understanding
why things are happening the mechanisms
for change in the environment that that
depends on on local history and culture
and politics and me as a data scientist
sitting in San Francisco removed from
reality I can’t train a computer to find
out why deforestation is occurring in
the in the remote forests of Borneo
there is no global sensor for local and
centers that that those words don’t even
make any sense let alone the concept
behind them so my only hope is to
empower those that actually do know why
things are happening who can
contextualize this environmental change
as part of a broader narrative here’s an
example this is an extension off of the
global forest watch data this is a map
where each dot represents a point where
people there were users of GFW left the
site that is this is where they were
looking when they left it’s the last
thing that they saw it’s the forest that
they were most interested in or at least
what threw them off the site there are
clusters of activity and interest
everywhere across this whole map but I
found one in particular in Peru that
that was inside of a United Nations
protected area why for example were
people looking at this particular place
how do they know to look there well I
have no idea I still don’t know however
I did pull this image from a saddle from
a commercial satellite provider which
shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that
there was there was gold mining in this
protected area
yeah this is this is a this is powerful
just to be able to sort of identify and
see why this is happening and again I
don’t really know why this is happening
but I do know that the people who knew
to look in this area they probably do
know why it was happening they do they
can contextualize this and took in terms
of the broader narrative that includes
indigenous property rights that includes
local politics and gets us much closer
to a solution my best bet here is to
affect change in this area as to empower
these change makers I just sit behind a
computer screen
but what I can do is I can match those
users to content that’s actionable
incredible something that they can
actually use to affect that change the
idea here is that this is targeted
content that we can use and for a better
outcomes so I’m not sure if you’ve ever
heard of precision medicine but this is
very similar to precision
environmentalism the idea that that
targeted content can actually create
change in other ways that that couldn’t
have existed before and I’m doubling
down on this interaction there are
thousands of stories like this every
week the world is big and it’s
constantly changing there are stories
about algal blooms and melting snowpack
and and solar installations all of which
can be materially enhanced by satellite
imagery this is a low cost source of of
credible consistent and compelling
information about our earth and our
planet and our environment I’m now
working on a project called overview
media which seeks to deliver this
imagery to journalists people who are
telling stories about environmental and
humanitarian events it is in effect a
news wire an environmental news wire
from space this imagery isn’t just
relevant though it is beautiful this
data is beautiful these particular
images were captured and produced by
damos imaging a Spanish company now one
of about a hundred image providers
globally this industry though was
created around enterprise customers like
the
Department of Defense it wasn’t created
for normal people it wasn’t created for
consumers so there’s plenty of room for
artistry and and just pure art to help
convert this information into into
something that evokes an emotional
response overview media is is part of a
new class of environmentalism it it’s
it’s at the it’s at the fore it’s really
cool it’s at the forefront it’s at the
cutting edge and this combination of
data science design and storytelling has
the greatest potential for truly
scalable impact in the environment and
very happy to be a part of it thank you
you
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