We achieve our mission by:
Enabling transformative research
Convening uncommon connections among individuals, organizations, and networks
Empowering action to create positive outcomes for people and the planet
Chittagong, Bangladesh, is often flooded with standing water, in turquoise. Image: Seto and Reba, City Unseen, Yale University Press, 2018.
Joplin, Missouri soon after the tornado in July 2011. The damage appears in purple. Image: Seto and Reba, City Unseen, Yale University Press, 2018.
Enabling Transformative Research
The objective of the center is to enable transformative research to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges. Many of those challenges are geospatial in nature: climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, migration, conflict. Furthermore, the causes, impacts, and solutions to planetary change are complex and geographically interconnected. Addressing and managing these challenges requires an understanding of the nature and interaction of drivers and consequences of these changes. To achieve our mission, beyond producing new research insights, also requires creating new types of information and decision-support products that can deliver place-based solutions.
McMurdo Station in Antarctica, bordered by ice. Image: Seto and Reba, City Unseen, Yale University Press, 2018.
Convening Uncommon Connections
We achieve our mission by convening uncommon connections among individuals, organizations, and networks. We develop close partnerships with companies and agencies engaged in geospatial information by putting data and research innovations both literally and figuratively ‘on the map’ for academia, governments, industry, NGOs, and the public.
The riparian buffers flanking the Niger River in Timbuktu, Mali. Image: Seto and Reba, City Unseen, Yale University Press, 2018.
Empowering Action
Geospatial skills are increasingly in demand and required in many fields, from the environment or public health to economics, law, and the digital humanities. In the U.S. alone, there are over 5 million people who use geospatial data or services in their jobs. Through an active emphasis on scholarship and the link with Yale’s domain expertise, the geospatial solutions produced by the center empower action and create positive outcomes for people and the planet.