GeoField represents a new effort by three organizations to bridge the gaps between three specializations: climate sensitive agriculture, Earth observation, and development program impact evaluations.
The initiative brings together AidData, DevGlobal Partners, and Mercy Corps, with financial support provided by The Gates Foundation.
The goal of this effort is to help aid organizations invest and measure impact in climate adaptation and agriculture programs by improving access to methods and resources that translate direct observations of long-term climate and land use changes into program-ready insights.
GeoField partners are conducting a series of use cases and organizing a community of practice aimed at reducing the barriers to use of Earth observation across the spectrum of agricultural impact evaluations. Through these communities of practice, the team hopes to build a repository of shared knowledge, and to highlight case studies where Earth observation expands the range of outcomes that can be assessed, improves the cost effectiveness of and rigor of impact evaluations, and enables evaluation of difficult-to-access geographies.
If you are a climate scientist, agronomist, economist, or agricultural aid provider or field partner, consider joining our community of practice.
Dr. Ariel BenYishay is a development economist specializing in empirical microeconomics, geospatial impact evaluations, and randomized control trials (RCTs). He heads AidData’s Research and Evaluation Unit, and oversees the AidData Research Consortium, some 120 academics at 50 universities worldwide. His current research focuses on the impacts of foreign aid programs on agriculture and deforestation as well as human health and social capital. He leads several large-scale RCTs, including one in the Philippines and several in Malawi.
Dr. Kunwar K.Singh is a Senior Geospatial Scientist at AidData and an Affiliate Faculty at theCenter for Geospatial Analysis at William & Mary. His research is at the nexus of land change and geospatial sciences where he investigates how the terrestrial system can support future land conversions and resource consumption under a changing climate. He uses geospatial data and technologies supplemented with data from ground observations and weather stations to develop workflows for large spatiotemporal data processing, assess broad-scale land change and its implications to natural resources, and measure outcomes of new adaptations to diminishing natural resources. He also serves as a science advisor to the NASA DEVELOP program at the Center for Geospatial Research at the University ofGeorgia.
