2020 UN World Data Forum

The UN World Data Forum will be held virtually on 19–21 October 2020. EO4SDG and partnering organizations, including UN Habitat, is organizing a session on “Tools to enable UN Member States at national and local level to use Earth observations to help deliver SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda”, under Thematic Area: TA 2. Innovations and synergies across data ecosystems.

This session will bring together Earth observations (EO) data providers and users representing diverse data communities — including member states (e.g., national statistical offices, planning ministries), UN agencies, global networks, academia, private sector, and civil society — to share their experiences and illustrate practical examples of how they are applying EO solutions to monitor and drive progress on urban sustainable development. Such examples will include, among others: monitoring indicators on urban expansion, tracking accessibility to public transport, stocktaking of open public spaces and their distributions across urban extents, slum and urban deprivations mapping, and assessing enviro-climatic conditions and spatial typology for the world’s most vulnerable. The event will also illustrate how emerging EO technologies and advances in cloud computing platforms  are facilitating access to, and use of, EO by countries, including access to analysis ready data on the cloud, open data cubes, and machine learning techniques using EO.

During this session, we will also present on progress to develop the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Toolkit on SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda to complement guidance published by UN Habitat and provide methodological advice and concrete examples on how EO can support national statisticians, chief data scientists, ministers of planning, international institutions, and other stakeholders with monitoring and driving progress toward SDG targets, reporting on the SDG Global Indicator Framework, and putting in place evidence-based development policies.

This session will be pre-recorded and made available via the UN World Data Forum website starting October 12.

EO4SDG is also participating in another virtual session, co-organized by CIESIN, Columbia University and the National Statistics Office of Colombia (DANE), titled “Use of Geospatial Data to Support COVID-19 Response”. Focusing on COVID-19 response and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this roundtable dialogue will convene experts from global, regional, and national agencies to share their views on the evolution of geospatial data production, management, integration, and dissemination. The emphasis will be on novel approaches to producing and using core geospatial data layers that, without targeted interventions, are unlikely to be generated at the extent required to achieve development goals for all. These layers include population distribution, administrative base maps of settlements and subnational boundaries, and development infrastructure and services.

This session is scheduled for Tuesday, 20 October 2020, from 15:30 to 16:45 PM (UTC). It will be live-streamed and recorded.

Find out more here.