Planetary-Scale Data Institutions: Rethinking Environmental Data for Public Power
Environmental and energy data are foundational to informed climate action—but today, this data is often fragmented, hard to access, and difficult to use at scale. Inconsistent formats, uneven reporting standards, and institutional silos create barriers to effective decision-making on everything from infrastructure planning to emissions reduction.
This talk explores what it would take to build data systems that are transparent, interoperable, and built for the public good. We’ll examine how political, educational, economic, and technological constraints shape data access and how those constraints might be restructured. Ultimately, the goal is to imagine new models for environmental data governance that match the scale and urgency of the climate crisis.
Speaker Bio:
Jed Sundwall is a distinguished leader at the intersection of data, technology, and global policy, currently serving as Executive Director of Radiant Earth where he works to expand access to data to enable cooperation on global challenges. His pioneering work in data sharing has shaped best practices adopted worldwide by NASA, USGS, Google, Microsoft, and other leading institutions, including his creation of the groundbreaking Amazon Web Services Open Data Program. As a faculty member at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and technical fellow at Taylor Geospatial Engine, Jed brings deep academic and practical expertise to complex challenges in cloud computing, economics, and environmental policy. Beyond his technical leadership, he explores the human side of technology as host of the Techs on Texts podcast, examining how literature and technology intersect in our rapidly evolving digital world.
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