Past Projects by Our Team.
Valuing User Preferences for Geospatial Fire Monitoring in Guatemala
The Geospatial Information System for Fire Management (SIGMA-I) is a suite of geospatial fire management tools that are widely disseminated, free of charge, to land managers and other users in Guatemala for on-the-ground fire prevention and response. Provision of SIGMA-I geospatial data and tools such as daily thermal “hotspot” maps provide positive benefits for sustainable fire management. To better understand its value we used a choice experiment to estimate land managers’ willingness to pay for individual attributes of SIGMA-I hotspot mapping.
SERVIR Assessment
A few years ago, Jared and Isaac led a three-year review and assessment of the joint NASA/USAID program known as SERVIR. The program provides specialized geospatial data tools for agriculture, ecology, disaster management, and other critical issues across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The research took us to Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and allowed us to as challenging and important questions about the use and measurable impacts of SERVIR’s products and applications in those countries.
SERVIR Valuation Studies
What is geospatial data really worth to the folks on the ground? As part of our evaluation of the SERVIR program, we also did a deep dive into two satellite-based early warning tools: one for forest fire monitoring in the jungles of Guatemala, and one for frost risk-management in the tea-growing regions of highland Kenya.
With help from economists, agricultural specialists, and ecologists we conducted intensive loss-avoidance and contingent valuation studies to capture and calculate the value of SERVIR’s early warning systems for the farmers and firefighters working in those challenging and remote regions.