Global Assessment of Vulnerability to Climate Change - Alex de Sherbinin

Sustainable Actions for a Sustainable Future
2009 Public Affairs Conference
Missouri State University

Alex de Sherbinin is a senior research associate at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an environmental data and analysis center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of environmental change at local, national and global scales. He has written peer-reviewed articles, chapters and reports, addressing population dynamics and the environment, remote sensing applications for environmental treaties, social science applications of remote sensing, environmental indicators, climate change vulnerability, consumption impacts on the environment, environment and security, urban sustainability, land-use and land-cover change, and community-based natural resource management. Prior to joining CIESIN, he served as a population-environment fellow with the Social Policy Program of IUCN-The World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland, and a population geographer at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), Washington, D.C. He also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania, West Africa.

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Education

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• missouri
• state
• university
• msu
• missouristate
• public
• affairs
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• sustainability
• sustainable
• environment
• local
• world
• research

[BernadetteCass]

This lecture contains good graphics (using GIS) that show how disaggregation of vulnerability data can aid how we can plan to adapt to climate change. Memorable for me is the map that illustrates that those people in New Orleans without a car in their household had greatest vulnerability and little chance of leaving the city and avoiding hurricane Katrina. Does the city have this disaggregated data now? Will they change their evacuation plans for the future in the light of this new data?