I found this piece a little hard to parse, so can I ask some questions?
It seems the main conclusion you have is that geospacial data is really important and maybe underrated in EA? And the we should focus on it being more accurate?
Hi Nathan, thanks for reading. The point of this post was really to address 2 problems:
1. It is generally really difficult to find geospatial scientists (Earth Observation, GIS...) and Earth System Scientists (Geophysicist, Volcanologist...) people in EA. We are a minority here. We get really excited when we meet each other. We want to gather a community and say we can contribute.
2. Geospatial data is very useful in many aspect of our cause areas, hence the breadth of case studies listed above, from neartermist to semi-longtermist (particularly supervolcano impact). While EA as a community don’t seem to attract a lot of geoscientists in general (perhaps it should). Current career advice seem to always err on the side of take your quantitative skills and go work in consulting or finance (which was what I did too). We know that geospatial data and our niche skillsets can contribute, therefore, this post is also a chance to inform the rest of EAs the current geospatial research happening. Think about geospatial data and spatial analysis as a “common language” between an epidemiologist and a volcanologist. Perhaps direct cross-pollination might not happen, but a platform for skill-sharing would be useful.
So yes, geospatial research is underrated. I am not arguing more people should become a satellite image analyst, more advocating for if you work in global health or poverty alleviation already, perhaps also pay more attention to the geospatial aspect of it. Additionally, we could be a platform that perhaps provide geospatial research support if this community gain traction.
I found this piece a little hard to parse, so can I ask some questions?
It seems the main conclusion you have is that geospacial data is really important and maybe underrated in EA? And the we should focus on it being more accurate?
Thanks for your work writing this piece.
Hi Nathan, thanks for reading. The point of this post was really to address 2 problems:
1. It is generally really difficult to find geospatial scientists (Earth Observation, GIS...) and Earth System Scientists (Geophysicist, Volcanologist...) people in EA. We are a minority here. We get really excited when we meet each other. We want to gather a community and say we can contribute.
2. Geospatial data is very useful in many aspect of our cause areas, hence the breadth of case studies listed above, from neartermist to semi-longtermist (particularly supervolcano impact). While EA as a community don’t seem to attract a lot of geoscientists in general (perhaps it should). Current career advice seem to always err on the side of take your quantitative skills and go work in consulting or finance (which was what I did too). We know that geospatial data and our niche skillsets can contribute, therefore, this post is also a chance to inform the rest of EAs the current geospatial research happening. Think about geospatial data and spatial analysis as a “common language” between an epidemiologist and a volcanologist. Perhaps direct cross-pollination might not happen, but a platform for skill-sharing would be useful.
So yes, geospatial research is underrated. I am not arguing more people should become a satellite image analyst, more advocating for if you work in global health or poverty alleviation already, perhaps also pay more attention to the geospatial aspect of it. Additionally, we could be a platform that perhaps provide geospatial research support if this community gain traction.
Hope this clarifies,
Chris
Thanks. Can I suggest some slight changes to the tl dr at the start
Tl;dr
I am a geospacial scientist who wants to connect with other geospacial scientist EAs
I think that since many EA orgs already use geospacial data, this is perhaps underrated (examples below)
Currently, we will gather on channel role-geoscientists on EA Anywhere slack. so if you are interested, check it out
We listed a few distilled topics that geoscientists EA might be interested in.