SEDAC (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center) occupies a unique niche in the NASA data ecosystem: it's the center specifically focused on where people intersect with the environment. Most NASA data centers deal in physical earth science — satellite imagery, atmospheric measurements, elevation models.
SEDAC asks what those environmental conditions mean for human populations: how many people are exposed to flood risk, air pollution, or sea level rise? Where do population density and climate vulnerability overlap? How does urbanization interact with agricultural land? These questions sit at the intersection of earth science and social science, and SEDAC is one of the few global data providers that systematically addresses them.
The Gridded Population of the World (GPW) dataset is the anchor product — a census-based population grid that provides a consistent global baseline at ~1km resolution, distinct from satellite-derived settlement products like WorldPop or Kontur. But SEDAC's broader catalog of exposure and vulnerability datasets is what makes it especially valuable for climate risk assessment, SDG monitoring, and public health mapping. Population exposure to specific hazards, urban extent delineation, PM2.5 air pollution grids, and climate vulnerability indices are pre-computed spatial layers that save analysts the work of overlaying population with environmental data themselves.
For GIS professionals working on development, humanitarian planning, or environmental policy at global or regional scale, SEDAC provides the human dimension that purely physical datasets don't.
