<div>Disruptions to the global supply chains of critical raw materials (CRM) have the potential to delay or increase the cost of the renewable energy transition. However, for some CRM, the primary drivers of these supply chain disruptions are likely to be issues related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rather than geological scarcity. Herein we combine public geospatial data as mappable proxies for key ESG indicators (e.g., conservation, biodiversity, freshwater, energy, waste, land use, human development, health and safety, and governance) and a global dataset of news events to train and validate three models for predicting “conflict” events (e.g., disputes, protests, violence) that can negatively impact CRM supply chains: (1) a knowledge-driven fuzzy logic model that yields an area under the curve (AUC) for the receiver operating characteristics plot of 0.72 for the entire model; (2) a naïve Bayes model that yields an AUC of 0.81 for the test set; and (3) a deep learning model comprising stacked autoencoders and a feed-forward artificial neural network that yields an AUC of 0.91 for the test set. The high AUC of the deep learning model demonstrates that public geospatial data can accurately predict natural resources conflicts, but we show that machine learning results are biased by proxies for population density and likely underestimate the potential for conflict in remote areas. Knowledge-driven methods are the least impacted by population bias and are used to calculate an ESG rating that is then applied to a global dataset of lithium occurrences as a case study. We demonstrate that giant lithium brine deposits (i.e., >10&nbsp;Mt Li2O) are restricted to regions with higher spatially situated risks relative to a subset of smaller pegmatite-hosted deposits that yield higher ESG ratings (i.e., lower risk). Our results reveal trade-offs between the sources of lithium, resource size, and spatially situated risks. We suggest that this type of geospatial ESG rating is broadly applicable to other CRM and that mapping spatially situated risks prior to mineral exploration has the potential to improve ESG outcomes and government policies that strengthen supply chains. <b>Citation:</b> Haynes M, Chudasama B, Goodenough K, Eerola T, Golev A, Zhang SE, Park J and Lèbre E (2024) Geospatial Data and Deep Learning Expose ESG Risks to Critical Raw Materials Supply: The Case of Lithium. <i>Earth Sci. Syst. Soc. </i>4:10109. doi: 10.3389/esss.2024.10109

<div>Tropical cyclones (TCs) frequently encompass multiple hazards, including extreme winds, intense rainfall, storm surges, flooding, lightning, and tornadoes. Accurate methods for forecasting TC tracks are essential to mitigate the loss of life and property associated with these hazards. Despite significant advancements, accurately forecasting the paths of TCs remains a challenge, particularly when they interact with complex land features, weaken into remnants after landfall, or are influenced by abnormal satellite observations. To address these challenges, we propose a generative adversarial network (GAN) model with a multi-scale architecture that processes input data at four distinct resolution levels. The model is designed to handle diverse inputs, including satellite cloud imagery, vorticity, wind speed, and geopotential height, and features an advanced center detection algorithm to ensure precise TC center identification. Our model demonstrates robustness during testing, accurately predicting TC paths over both ocean and land, while also identifying weak TC remnants. Compared to other deep learning approaches, our method achieves superior detection accuracy, with an average error of 41.0 km for all landfalling TCs in Australia from 2015 to 2020. Notably, for five TCs with abnormal satellite observations, our model maintains high accuracy with a prediction error of 35.2 km, a scenario often overlooked by other approaches. <b>Citation:</b> Huang, H.; Deng, D.; Hu, L.; Sun, N. Anomaly-Aware Tropical Cyclone Track Prediction Using Multi-Scale Generative Adversarial Networks. Remote Sens. 2025, 17, 583. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs17040583