Finding NASA’s Data from Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) – Moved to Harvard

Posted: 10/2/2025 ()

(SEDAC) – moved to Harvard

Data from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) along with other recent data releases are now available through a special CIESIN subcollection of the CAFE collection on the Harvard Dataverse. CAFE is the Research Coordinating Center for Health and Extreme Weather, based at Boston University School of Public Health and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The spatial data produced or curated by SEDAC were specifically intended to facilitate integration with gridded Earth science data, in particular data from NASA’s constellation of remote sensing instruments. SEDAC was managed by CIESIN from 1998-2025.

The Harvard Dataverse is a generalist repository that adheres to the FAIR Principles, is open-source, and enables anyone to both deposit and download data.  According to CIESIN director, Dr. Alex de Sherbinin, “The CIESIN collection is of great value to those who are seeking to understand current climate risks, such as extreme heat and sea level rise, among highly exposed populations. It also includes projections of population and urban areas to better characterize future exposure. This makes it a perfect fit for the CAFE collection.”

The initial subcollection contains 234 SEDAC data sets plus four recent CIESIN releases.  We will be releasing roughly 60 more SEDAC data sets over the coming months.  Meanwhile, NASA Earthdata has restored access to SEDAC data sets (from Earthdata’s SEDAC page scroll down to Data at SEDAC).