This is the twenty-first in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 17-18 October 2025. Pankaj Kumar is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the International Geographical Union.

Dear colleagues, 

I have the honor to present my candidature as an Ordinary Member to the CODATA executive committee. I am Dr. Pankaj Kumar, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India, and currently serving as Assistant Secretary General of the International Geographical Union (IGU). Previously, I served as Secretary of the IGU Commission on Biogeography and Biodiversity (2016–2020) and the Commission on Mountain Studies (2020–2024). Guided by the IGU Vision and Strategy 2024–2028, which emphasizes Open Science, I have been deeply engaged in advancing this global mission. I also contributed to the drafting of the IGU Statement on Academic Freedom and Ethics (IGU-SAFE) and led the IGU Executive Committee’s establishment of the GeoAI Task Force, reflecting my commitment to the ethical and innovative use of artificial intelligence in geospatial research.

My research focuses on climate vulnerability, disaster risk reduction, environmental sustainability, and mountain livelihoods. My work integrates open-access Earth Observation (EO) data, open-source software, cloud computing, and GeoAI for monitoring, mapping, and Prediction in Ungauged Basins (PUB). These initiatives directly contribute to Open Science and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recognition of these contributions, I was honoured with the National Geospatial Faculty Fellow Award 2024 from IIT Bombay under the Ministry of Education’s FOSSEE initiative.

My association with CODATA has been long-standing and productive. Since 2021, I have served as IGU’s liaison to CODATA and, since 2023, as a member of the International Data Policy Committee (IDPC). My research aligns with the IDPC Topics for Action 2023–2025, particularly in ethics, AI policy, and data governance. Building on this collaboration, an IGU–CODATA joint panel titled “Operationalizing GeoAI for Sustainability: Data Governance, Data Visitation, and Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS)” has been proposed for the IGU Regional Conference 2026 in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Earlier, I co-organized the ICSU CODATA PASTD–IGU International Training Workshop on “Big Data for Science and Sustainability in Developing Countries” (Hyderabad, 2017) and participated in CODATA’s Beijing Workshop on “Scientific Big Data Sharing and Publication for Developing Countries.” I have also represented IGU and CODATA in multiple global forums, including the UN Geospatial Knowledge and Innovation Week 2024 (China), the 35th International Geographical Congress 2024 (Ireland), and the DBAR–CODATA Big Earth Data Session 2025 (China), International Symposium on Open Science Cloud (ISOSC), Suzhou, China—where I spoke on GeoAI, geoprivacy, and academic freedom in IGU.

These engagements reaffirm my belief that Open Science becomes meaningful only when coupled with capacity development and equitable access. I am dedicated to expanding CODATA’s outreach to social scientists, educators, and practitioners through mentorship and skills-building initiatives. IGU, under my coordination, is eager to strengthen collaboration with CODATA on data quality, reliability, ethics, and AI/GeoAI policy frameworks.

My candidacy is grounded in the conviction data are more than technical resources — they are tools for empowerment. The Data–Information–Knowledge–Wisdom (DIKW) framework plays a crucial role in understanding and addressing complex challenges. It highlights how raw data evolve into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom, enabling informed decisions.

My active and long-term engagement in IGU commissions and experience as Assistant Secretary General of the International Geographical Union (IGU) have placed me in a position to shoulder new responsibilities as an Executive Committee Ordinary Member of CODATA. I am very keen to contribute to the mission of CODATA to connect data and people at international, national, regional and local level to advance data policy and open science, and to effectively contribute to global and local challenges of today’s increasingly digital societies.