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drawn which display the quantity of flows a country of origin to another. The second sequence highlights the country in which UNHCR has counted the most refugees or IDP’s that year. The arcs (which represent the scale of the flow according to the number of people moving across a border) now show pixels flowing through them. Each moving pixel on the screen represents ten people. Rising Seas, Sinking Cities As greenhouse gases act to warm the planet at the unprecedented pace of 0.2° per decade, the oceans are also warming up. The combined effects of the melting polar icecaps and thermal expansion of the water will cause sea levels to rise an estimated one meter by the end of the century. Visual representation of this is not created with the symbol of the lonely polar bear adrift on an ice floe, but rather by attending to the people who pay the highest price. It becomes evident that the populations most affected will be those living on small islands or in coastal cities, the latter being amongst the most densely populated places in the world. These are also the people whose carbon emissions remain marginal. They are the least responsible for, and will most likely be the most affected by, climate change. This scene assembles multiple global datasets to help tell a story. To explain the first process contributing to the rise in sea-level, bubbles of carbon emission grow much larger around certain cities and countries, displaying inequitable contributions to the atmosphere. Thermal maps then appear in order to visualize the spatial pattern of rising temperatures. These maps are based on climate
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simulation models, and present a sequence of predictions at five-year intervals between 2000 and 2100. Temperature rise is more pronounced in the Global South, while carbon emissions are more pronounced in the North. Considering the premise that a mere centimeter rise in sea level could put a million people at risk of displacement, maps display the nearly 10,000 cities which are located within one hundred kilometers of the coast. Collectively, these cities house one and a half billion people: 25% of global population. Which cities are more vulnerable than others, and why? In order to answer this question, the cities are stretched to surround the room, and displayed in elevation. An assessment tool is then used to query the dataset. The Netherlands, which is in large part twenty-three meters below sea level, is much less likely to be flooded than Haiti, which has 53.9% of its population living on incomes of less than one US dollar per day. Mumbai— one of the fastest-growing cities in the world—is building (slums) in an ad-hoc manner on some of the most vulnerable floodplains. The final visualization is at full scale in terms of sea-level rise: one meter of water fills the room from the ground up covering the cities within that elevation zone. Some cities rise out of the water, showing their decreased risk. Others, which are more vulnerable, do not. Project Team Diller Scofidio and Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan and Ben Rubin in Collaboration with Jeremy Linzee, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Stewart Smith and Aaron Meyers with Michael Doherty and Hans Christoph Steiner.
Data and Sources The following list of organizations have helped us in our acquisition of data. They have not, however, been asked to vouch for or endorse the content of this exhibition; our acknowledgements are merely an expression of our gratitude. Population Shifts: Cities Gridded Population of the World, version 3 (GPWv3), Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IPFRI), the World Bank; and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), 2004 sedac.ciesin.columbia. edu/gpw/index.jsp The world’s fastest growing cities and urban areas from 2006 to 2020, City Mayors, Statistics www.citymayors.com/ statistics/urban_growth1.html Remittances: Sending Money Home Global Migrant Origin Database (updated March 2007), The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC), University of Sussex www.migrationdrc.org/ research/typesofmigration/global_migrant_origin_ database.html Bilateral migration matrix and Bilateral remittance estimates (using migrant stocks, destination country incomes, and source country incomes), data associated with World Bank Working Paper No. 102 “South-South Migration and Remittances” go.worldbank.org/TGZNEJBXD0 Sending money home: Worldwide remittance flows to developing countries, The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) www.ifad.org/events/remittances/maps/ index.htm Statistical Annex from the 2007 Development Co-operation Report, Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD-DAC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) www.oecd.org/dac/stats/dac/dcrannex World Economic and Financial Surveys, World Economic Outlook Database (April 2008 Edition), International Monetary Fund (IMF) www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ weo/2008/01/weodata/index.aspx WEO Groups and Aggregates Information, World Economic and Financial Surveys, World Economic Outlook Database (April 2008 Edition) www.imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/weo/2008/01/weodata/groups.htm Flags of the nations flagpedia.net/ Political Refugees and Forced Migration United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Online Statistical Population Database (scraped September 2-5, 2008) www.unhcr.org/statistics Historical Maps, Field Information and Coordination Support Section, Division of operational Services, UNHCR
Rising Seas, Sinking Cities Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version 1 (GRUMP): Settlement Points, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IPFRI), the World Bank; and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), 2004 sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change, A Regional Climate SCENario GENerator www.cgd. ucar.edu/cas/wigley/magicc Geographically based Economic data (GEcon 1.3) gecon.yale.edu Self-assessment matrix: Discovering a hotspot, Climate Resilient Cities, The World Bank, East Asia and Pacific Region go. worldbank.org/3NJGDJ6R10 CO2 emissions, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Gregg Marland, Tom Boden, and Bob Andres) cdiac.esd.ornl.gov The Elevation Query Web Service, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) gisdata.usgs.gov/xmlwebservices2/elevation_service.asmx Gridded Population of the World, version 3 (GPWv3)—National Boundaries, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IPFRI), the World Bank; and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), 2004 sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/ gpw/index.jsp