Columbia University hosted Data Science Day 2018 on March 28th at their campus in Manhattan. I traveled to New York to attend the event and learn more about how data science plays a role in health, climate, and finance research. A few of the presentations stood out, including the environmental talks and a keynote address from Diane Greene, the CEO of Google Cloud.
I was extremely excited when I first saw the program for Data Science Day because I noticed a series of lightning talks on climate change. The session entitled ‘Climate + Finance: Use of Environmental Data to Measure and Anticipate Financial Risk’ brought together Columbia staff who specialize in economics, climate research, and environmental policy.
Geoffrey Heal gave a talk called ‘Rising Waters: The Economic Impact of Sea Level Rise’ that addressed financial models associated with sea level rise projections. Heal presented major cities and associated data for property values, historic flooding, and flood maps to illustrate the overall financial impact of sea level rise. This talk highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary data science work when addressing complex issues like climate change. Collaboration between academic researchers and national groups like NOAA and FEMA provides a platform for data science work that can inform professionals across career fields.
Lisa Goddard spoke about ‘Data & Finance in the Developing World’. The main topics of her talk were food security and drought impacts in developing countries. Goddard’s research included rain gauge measurements, satellite imagery, soil moisture levels, and crop yield records. She addressed the use of various climate data to advise appropriate resilience tactics, such as crop insurance for financial security. Overall, dealing with food security will be essential when handling the impacts of climate change on small scale farms across the world. Data science can help the agricultural sector by providing farmers with more information to consider when planning for effects of climate change.
Wolfram Schlenker gave a talk called ‘Agricultural Yields and Prices in a Warming World’. He addressed the impact of weather shocks to common crops, such as unanticipated exposure to hot temperatures. Corn, a tropical plant, can potentially see higher yields when there are sudden, extreme instances of warm weather. Schlenker presented a fresh perspective on how climate change can impact crop yields differently according to species. A combination of climate models, market conditions, and yield data can provide a foundation for better understanding climate change’s impacts on agricultural commodities on a case-by-case basis.
Diane Greene’s keynote session for Data Science Day 2018 provoked important considerations when navigating the world of data science. Greene mentioned Google Cloud’s main goal is to deliver intuitive technological capabilities. Google Cloud deals with a wide range of APIs that make the flow of information across the world easier. For example, Google Cloud’s Translation API makes it possible for online articles to be translated in different languages to increase readability. Diane Greene’s talk inspired me to be creative with innovation in data science and consider usability and collaboration on all fronts.
This event was a great opportunity to learn from leaders in the field of data science. Communication and collaboration were major themes of these talks and I left Data Science Day 2018 feeling empowered to address challenges like climate change.