Human Planet Forum 2019

The second Human Planet Forum will take place on September 30 to October 2, 2019 on the Lamont Campus of Columbia University in Palisades, New York. This meeting will provide a unique venue for expert groups working on different aspects of these issues to meet together to share progress, assess areas of common interest, and coordinate activities and plans.

Humans continue to change the surface of the Earth at a rapid pace, and in turn our settlements, infrastructure, and activities remain highly sensitive to environmental variability and change. Monitoring and prediction of urbanization, population movement, rural development, and related changes in the Human Planet are therefore vital. The Human Planet Initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is working to harness new data sources, technologies and analytic approaches to address key needs for improved understanding and modeling and for better tools for decision making in support of sustainable development.

Key topics will include:

1.) Advances in slum mapping
2) Downscaled future scenarios of population and economic activity
3) Global definition of cities and rural areas
4) Mapping of secondary and tertiary administrative boundaries
5) Validation and inter-comparison strategies for human settlement and population data
6) Applications, decision support, and stakeholder engagement
7) Development of Human Planet Atlases in the 2020-2022 time frame

The forum will take place on September 30 to October 2, 2019 on the Lamont Campus of Columbia University in Palisades, New York. The program will include a mix of keynote talks, panel discussions, lightning talks, working meetings, and interactive sessions.

Click here to access the full meeting agenda.