Dr. Robert S. Chen

Annual Message from the Director:   2009 | 2008 | 2007

Earth Institute Profile

Biography

Robert S. Chen is the director of CIESIN and a senior research scientist. He served as CIESIN’s deputy director from July 1998 to April 2006 and as CIESIN’s interim director from May 2006 to January 2007. Dr. Chen is also the manager and co-principal investigator of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), a data center in the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System. He is currently secretary-general of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and a member of the new ICSU ad hoc Strategic Coordinating Committee on Information and Data (SCCID).

Dr. Chen has contributed to activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for more than a decade and currently serves as an ex officio member of the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impacts and Climate Analysis (TGICA) and co-manager of the IPCC Data Distribution Center (DDC). He was recently appointed to the Committee on Spatial Data Enabling USGS Strategic Science in the 21st Century of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Board on Earth Sciences and Resources (BESR) and also serves as an ex officio member of the NRC Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI).

At Columbia University, Dr. Chen is a member of the faculty steering committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Beijing and recently participated as a member of the University's Task Force on E-Science. He is co-leading a trans-Atlantic seminar series on risk and sustainable development with faculty from three universities in Paris, France, with support from a Columbia-Paris Alliance Joint Projects Grant.

Within the Earth Institute, Dr. Chen serves as an ex-officio member of the Earth Institute (EI) Faculty and a member of the Practice Subcommittee. He has helped to lead several EI cross-cutting initiatives such as the CyberInfrastructure for the Earth Institute (CI4EI) project and the Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR). He recently coordinated the CHRR contribution to a project on Risk Assessment and Mitigation Measures for Natural and Conflict-Related Hazards in the Asian Region, in collaboration with the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI). A previous study on global natural disaster risks, conducted in collaboration with the World Bank, NGI, and other partners, received a “Good Practice Award” in 2006 from the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group.

As secretary-general of CODATA, Dr. Chen has co-led efforts to develop implementation guidelines for the data sharing principles for the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), and is currently a member of the Data Sharing Task Force of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). With support from ICSU, he is helping to lead a CODATA initiative to develop a Polar Information Commons aimed at promoting stewardship of polar science data and information. He contributed to CODATA's activities at the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), including co-authoring of an editorial in Science with former CODATA president Shuichi Iwata of the University of Tokyo.

While at CIESIN, Dr. Chen has helped initiate and manage a wide range of projects and data development efforts, including CIESIN's widely used Gridded Population of the World (GPW) dataset, its Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI) service, and the CIESIN World Data Center for Human Interactions in the Environment. He coordinated CIESIN’s spatial analysis and mapping support to the Millennium Development Project led by EI Director Jeffrey Sachs, and has overseen other projects on geospatial data management, managing geospatial electronic records, poverty mapping, sustainability indicators, and public health applications of earth science data.

Prior to joining CIESIN, Dr. Chen served on the faculty of the World Hunger Program at Brown University. He has held research fellowships at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, and the National Research Council in Washington DC. He served on the Steering Committee of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Postdoctoral Program in Climate and Global Change and on the Committee on Standards for Geographic Data of the Association of American Geographers. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds Masters degrees in Technology and Policy and in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His undergraduate degree was in Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Uhlir, P.F., R.S. Chen, J.I. Gabrynowicz, and K. Janssen. 2009. Toward implementation of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems data sharing principles. Journal of Space Law 35 (1):201–290. Simultaneously published as Uhlir, P.F., R.S. Chen, J.I. Gabrynowicz, and K. Janssen. 2009. Toward implementation of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems data sharing principles. 2009. CODATA Data Science Journal 8:GEO2-GEO91.

Chen, R.S. 2009. How an Information Commons Approach Can Benefit Digital Earth. Plenary presentation at the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth, Beijing, China, 12 September.

Uhlir, P., R.S. Chen, and J.I. Gabrynowicz. 2009. Global Change in Environmental Data Sharing: Implementation of the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles. Keynote address given by P. Uhlir at the COMMUNIA Conference 2009:Global Science & Economics of Knowledge-Sharing Institutions, Torino, Italy, 28-30 June.

Chen, R.S. 2009. The Role of China and U.S. in Global Sustainable Development. Panel presentation at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute 60th Anniversary Symposium on "Columbia and China: Past and Future," Beijing, China, 31 May.

Downs, R.R. and R.S. Chen. 2009. Conducting a Self-Assessment of a Long-Term Archive for Interdisciplinary Scientific Data as a Trustworthy Digital Repository. Plenary Session, Open Repositories 2009, Atlanta GA, 18-21 May.

Chen, R.S. 2009. Secondhand Planet. Goldring Distinguished Visiting Lecture, Program in the Environment, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, 4 March.

Downs, R.R., R.S. Chen, R.T. Cartolano, and R. Bose. 2008. Collaborative Establishment of a Long-Term Archive for Stewardship of Interdisciplinary Scientific Data. Poster Paper, Fall meeting, American Geophysical Union, San Francisco CA, 16 December.

Chen, R.S and Uhlir, P. 2008. Proposed Implementation Guidelines for the Data Sharing Principles of GEOSS: Report of GEOSS Task DA-06-01. 21st CODATA Conference, Kyiv, Ukraine, 9–10 October.

Chen, R.S., R.R. Downs, G. Yetman, S. Adamo. 2008. The Potential Role of the World Data Centers in the Global Earth Observing System of Systems and the International Polar Year: CIESIN Experience to Date. 21st CODATA Conference, Kyiv, Ukraine, 9-10 October.

Downs, R.R. and R.S. Chen. Creating a Trustworthy Digital Repository for a Long-Term Archive of Interdisciplinary Data: A Case Study. 21st CODATA Conference, Kyiv, Ukraine, 9-10 October.

Downs, R. R., J. Schumacher, R.S. Chen, and W.C. Lenhardt. 2008. Assessing the Scientific Benefits of Interdisciplinary Use of Social Science Data through Citation Analysis. International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST) 2008 Conference. Palo Alto CA, 28 May.

Downs, R. R. and R.S. Chen. 2008. Implementing a Digital Repository for the Preservation of Interdisciplinary Data. International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST) 2008 Conference, Palo Alto CA, 30 May.

Chen, R.S. 2008. Developing GIScience and Geographic Analysis Programs at Universities Which Do Not Have Geography Departments. 2008 Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston MA, 15-19 April.

Ahamed, S., S.B. Adamo, M. Levy, and R.S. Chen. 2008. The Role of Spatial Data Infrastructure in Integrating Climate Change Information with a Focus on Monitoring Observed Climate Impacts. UN Conference on Climate Change and Official Statistics, Oslo, Norway, 14-16 April.

Ahamed, S., S.B. Adamo, M. Levy, and R.S. Chen. 2008. Why Demographic Data Are Not Up to the Challenge of Measuring Climate Risks and What to Do about It. UN Conference on Climate Change and Official Statistics, Oslo, Norway, 14-16 April.

de Sherbinin, A., R.S. Chen, and M. Levy. 2007. What does climate change mean for the hazards community? Natural Hazards Observer XXXI (6):11–13.

Arnold, M., R.S. Chen, U. Deichmann, M. Dilley, A.L. Lerner-Lam, R.J. Pullen, and Z. Trohanis, eds. 2006. Natural disaster hotspots case studies. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Chen, R.S. 2006. Position Paper: Top three issues in the long-term preservation, management, and curation of scientific data in digital format. In To stand the test of time: Long-term stewardship of digital data sets in science and engineering. Arlington, Virginia: Association of Research Libraries, p. 122.

Chen, R.S., and E. Sydor, eds. 2006. Where the poor are: An atlas of poverty. Palisades, NY: CIESIN, Columbia University.

de Sherbinin, A., and R.S. Chen. 2006. Global change: Revealing humanity’s impact on the environment. Earth Imaging Journal (May/June):12–17.

Downs, R.R. and R.S. Chen. 2005. Organizational needs for managing and preserving geospatial data and related electronic records. Data Science Journal 4 (December 31): 255-271. Release Date: January 25, 2006. http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/dsj/4/0/4_255/_article.

Iwata, S., and R.S. Chen. 2005. Science and the digital divide (editorial). Science 310 (October 21):405.

Dilley, M., R.S. Chen, U. Deichmann, A.L. Lerner-Lam, M. Arnold with J. Agwe, P. Buys, O. Kjekstad, B. Lyon, and G. Yetman. 2005. Natural disaster hotspots: A global risk analysis. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

de Sherbinin, A., and R.S. Chen, eds. 2005. Global Spatial Data and Information User Workshop.  Palisades, NY: SEDAC/CIESIN.