SciDev.Net

CHIEX investigates how climate variability affects human health in the tropical Americas. It runs projects in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico and Venezuela, and focuses specifically on the spread of dengue fever and malaria in these countries. These projects have practical implications; for example, a study in Cuba led to the development of a "bioclimatological" monitoring system that uses climatic predictions to prevent and control disease.

The Dartmouth Flood Observatory, based in the United States, uses remote sensing data to detect, measure and map river discharge and flooding. It publishes rapid response inundation maps during a flood as well as an atlas of large floods from 1985 to present.

Data from the observatory are used by several disaster alert and relief agencies, including Sentinel Asia, Thomson Reuters AlertNet, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Europe's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System.

The Desert Research Institute is based in Nevada in the United States. Its principal research areas include atmosphere, water and land management – in the United States and in the developing world. The institute is engaged in a project to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Ghana, Mali and Niger through the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI). WAWI aims to do this before 2008.

Funded by the European Union, DESIRE is an international collaborative project aimed at establishing alternative strategies for using and protecting arid and semi-arid ecosystems under threat from land degradation and desertification. Field sites for testing new conservation techniques include areas in Africa, China and Latin America.

The DESIRE website publishes news and information about the project, highlights upcoming events and links to other relevant sites.

Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative is an independent non-profit collaboration between organisations including the Ministry of Health of Malaysia, and Médecins sans Frontières that focuses on developing drugs for neglected diseases, such as leishmaniasis.

DNDi harnesses existing research and development capacity to develop these drugs, and ensures they are accessible to the developing world.

There are extensive links to articles, publications and conference reports, many available for downloading, and a petition to support DNDi in its call to governments around the world to do more for neglected diseases.

EM-DAT, run by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, provides statistics and data on disasters' impact on humans, such as the number of people killed, injured or affected as well as economic damage estimates and disaster-specific aid contributions.

Users can search the database or pull out summary information including graphs to show temporal trends as well as reference maps of disasters by type or date.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's Gates Malaria Partnership is a collaboration between research centres in the UK, Denmark and those in n Africa, where malaria is widespread. It seeks to improve malaria control in these regions through improved training, promoting research in malaria-endemic countries, and ensuring the ability to translate knowledge into practice and treatment.

The website describes the priority areas of the partnership, including epidemic prediction and response, and household and community level interactions.

The Global Canopy Programme (GCP) is an alliance of over 30 scientific institutions in 19 countries that work on forest canopy research, education and conservation. In addition to supporting research projects, GCP is active in informing policymakers and working with governments and the finance sector to establish pilot projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). GCP publishes information for journalists, policy briefs and a range of related publications.