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Interrante, Shekhar and Srivastava Co-Lead $8M NSF Project

October 6, 2011

Picture of Victoria Interrante

Terra Populus: A Global Population / Environment Data Network (or TerraPop for short) was awarded a five-year, $8M grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyber Infrastructure. The lead investigators from the University of Minnesota are Steven Ruggles (Minnesota Population Center), Jonathon Foley (Institute on the Environment), Victoria Interrante (Computer Science and Engineering), Wendy Pradt Lougee (University of Minnesota Libraries), Steven Manson (Geography), Jaideep Srivastava (Computer Science and Engineering) and Shashi Shekhar (Computer Science and Engineering).

Picture of Shashi Shekhar

Additional partners include the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Terrapop will combine two centuries of census data with global environmental data including land cover, land use and climate records. Beyond the goal of integrating this information into a common database, the team plans to disseminate the newly available data to researchers around the world.

Picture of Jaideep Srivastava

TerraPop aims to accomplish four specific tasks over the coming years including:

  1. Collecting, preserving, integrating and describing datasets that measure changes in the world’s population and environment over the past two centuries.
  2. Developing tools and procedures to manage and disseminate the data collections.
  3. Carrying out education and outreach to engage the scientific community and the public and reach the broadest possible audience.
  4. Establishing an organizational structure to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project.
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