While geospatial data and technology are helping governments worldwide answer critical COVID-19 questions, each country deals with unique but related constraints that impact response efforts. Many world leaders are forging partnerships and creating collaborative strategies to gather data and analysis to address their constraints and deliver data-driven responses. This work builds on a 2015 commitment from nearly 200 countries to strengthen resilience to environmental, social, and economic challenges—outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals, the Sendai Framework, and the Paris Climate Agreement. Five years later, the world confronts a devastating pandemic that could significantly hinder these efforts and alter strategies moving forward. Before an agency or government can act, it needs accurate information about population count, movement, and accessibility to essential services. But, gathering robust data during a pandemic is no easy feat.
Read MoreAccess to timely and reliable data on population is critical to delivering global development programs and humanitarian assistance. It helps governments, donors, and implementing partners understand what services people have access to and the challenges they face both geographically and socially. Gridded population datasets — spatial databases on global populations that can be analyzed within mapping software — enable this to be achieved. But awareness of them is low.
Read MoreAs 120+ National Statisticians and hundreds of stakeholders across the globe convened at the UN for the 51st session of the Statistical Commission last week, how to manage the increasing breadth of new data and technologies, new responsibilities, and the changing data ecosystem was at the forefront of the conversation.
Read MoreThis week, representatives from eight very diverse countries (Bangladesh, Columbia, Ghana, Mongolia, Nepal, Paraguay, Rwanda, and Senegal) convened in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss priority data needs; specifically, the kinds of timely (even real-time) data they need to effectively track sustainable development. In spite of varied data priorities across the countries (from poverty, to agriculture, to education) commonalities emerged that can expedite the accessibility, timeliness, and quality of data, such as focusing on the better use of satellite imagery and co-investing in administrative data.
Read MoreLast month, TReNDS members from around the world convened in Los Angeles on October 28 – 30 for the group’s bi-annual meeting. As part of the meeting, members honed their debate skills in a series of two Hollywood Reporter-style filmed roundtable debates on the relevance of the data revolution for sustainable development.
Read MoreThe Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) is a global non-governmental, non-profit organization that engages a network of students and young professionals in support of the United Nations Programme on Space Applications. Over October 17-19, 2019, SGAC held its annual Space Generation Congress in the Washington DC area, and SDSN TReNDS participated in a special workshop on the SDGs that examined how space technology can inform our understanding of sustainable development.
Read MoreEarlier this month, TReNDS joined partners at the second annual Human Planet Forum, hosted by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), the European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), and the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), to explore issues related to earth observation and population data for sustainable development. During the Forum, TReNDS presented on the POPGRID initiative and co-hosted a discussion with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) on how to best communicate the value of gridded population data products to policymakers.
Read MoreOn Wednesday 25 September 2019, SDSN TReNDS, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), the World Bank and UN Statistics Division launch their new initiative, Data for Now, on the margins of the UN General Assembly. The initiative aims to increase the frequency and timeliness of key sustainable development measures to enable governments to make evidence-based decision and drive progress on the world's biggest challenges.
Read MoreGeospatial data and technologies can support the Sustainable Development Goals – but only if the community helps make the case for them by improving communication and integration across stakeholders and processes. TReNDS Manager Maryam Rabiee reflects on this and more from the Ninth Session of the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).
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