Jay Graham visited Haiti for the first time in late February, as he joined urgent efforts to bring clean water to Port au Prince after the 12 January earthquake. Working intense, 15-hour days, the AAAS S&T Policy Fellow helped provide hand washing stations and other sanitation needs for the burgeoning camps of displaced people.

Do you know how much water it takes to light your house? How about the electricity involved in watering your prize-winning tulips? As it turns out, it’s a lot more than you’d think.

Due to expected population growth and urbanization in the United States—especially in drought-prone Western States like Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Nevada—two top energy experts at a AAAS discussion urged the federal and local governments to explore new strategies to meet nation’s burgeoning water and electricity needs.

Several continuous developments over the past two decades have greatly increased the potential application of geospatial technologies to human rights issues and a range of other fields. The first is the decreasing cost of personal computing technology and the robust development of associated software, both proprietary and open source. The rapid growth of available geospatial data is a second factor. A third is the increasing amount of satellite sensors imaging the earth allowing for the availability of high-resolution satellite imagery commercially and publicly.