CIESIN's director, Alex de Sherbinin, and associate directors, Dana Thomson and Greg Yetman, participated in a workshop at Yale University on "Reimagining Sustainability Policy Metrics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" from 13-14 May. The workshop was organized by long-term CIESIN collaborators on the Environmental Performance Index, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP). Dr. de Sherbinin gave an opening talk on Use of Satellite Earth Observation Data in the Development of Country-level Indicators, based on CIESIN's experience in developing satellite-derived environmental indicators for the EPI and under NASA funding (see presentation). Given that many AI applications in the environmental domain are related to earth observations, this presentation served as a level-setter.
Dr. Thomson spoke on the panel Democratizing Environmental Data about co-creation processes, and Mr. Yetman spoke on the closing panel, From Metrics to Institutional Action.
The workshop included representatives from organizations conducting cutting edge research and applications related to AI applications for sustainability, including the Alan Turing Institute, MIT, Earth Genome, and large tech firms. Topics included applications of AI to engineering solutions for climate action, EO for mining activities in Africa, and the ways that AI can be used by businesses to improve the efficiency of operations. An important subtopic was the varied metrics that can be used to assess model performance that go beyond "average accuracy".
