RSIS' Tim Love, Vadlamani Kumar and Eric Wolvovsky won high praise from the US State Department for their response at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center to the devastating earthquake in Pakistan last fall.

Love, a Project Manager; Kumar, a Senior Scientist, and Wolvovsky, a meteorologist, helped analysts from the State Department's Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) identify, interpret and reformat "highly informative data on winter weather conditions" in the earthquake region, Alan Davis, HIU Chief, wrote to Jim Laver, CPC Director.

The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data layers they produced were incorporated into an HIU product focusing on winter weather and elevation that was widely distributed by the State Department to humanitarian responders at headquarters and field levels, Davis said.

"The HIU has collaborated with Mr. Love in the past, and his work in this case was just as appreciated," Davis wrote. "We are consistently impressed by the professionalism and collegiality with which he applies himself to the tasks of liaising with our team and researching key data issues in a timely manner to help us meet our goal of identifying, collecting, analyzing and sharing unclassified information critical to USG decision- makers and partners in response to humanitarian emergencies. On this particular product, Dr. Kumar and Mr. Wolvovsky, too, provided critical support to CPC's efforts."