Data & Analytics

Data and analytics are increasingly recognized as fundamental elements in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These 17 goals, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, aim to address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. Each goal is interconnected, requiring a holistic approach to achieve sustainable development by 2030. Within this framework, SDG 17, "Partnerships for the Goals," is particularly crucial as it highlights the need for high-quality, timely, and reliable data to drive progress across all goals.

The importance of data and analytics in realizing the SDGs cannot be overstated. Accurate and insightful data is necessary for several key aspects: assessing current progress, identifying existing gaps, informing policy-making, and guiding the allocation of resources. For instance, in addressing SDG 1, "No Poverty," data helps in understanding the demographics of poverty, allowing for targeted interventions. Similarly, for SDG 3, "Good Health and Well-being," data analytics play a crucial role in tracking disease outbreaks, understanding health trends, and improving healthcare delivery.

In the education sector, under SDG 4, "Quality Education," data can inform about areas where educational resources are lacking or where dropout rates are high, guiding efforts to enhance education systems. Additionally, for SDG 13, "Climate Action," data is indispensable for understanding climate patterns, predicting future scenarios, and formulating strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Advancements in data collection and analytics methods have opened up new possibilities. Mobile technology, for example, has revolutionized data collection, enabling real-time gathering and dissemination of information even in remote areas. Remote sensing technologies, such as satellite imagery, provide critical data on environmental changes, agricultural patterns, and urban development. These methods not only expand the scope of data collection but also enhance its accuracy and timeliness.

However, challenges remain in harnessing the full potential of data for the SDGs. These include issues related to data availability, quality, accessibility, and interoperability. In many parts of the world, especially in developing countries, there is a significant data deficit. This gap hinders the ability to make informed decisions and effectively address the SDGs. Moreover, data collected must be reliable and relevant to be useful in policy formulation and implementation.

To overcome these challenges, partnerships between governments, private sector, academia, and civil society are vital. These collaborations can foster innovation in data collection and analytics, ensure data sharing, and build capacities for data analysis. Furthermore, there is a need for a global framework to standardize data collection and reporting methods, which will facilitate comparison and aggregation of data across regions and countries.

This chapter advances SDG 6, 12, and 13 by explaining the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow On (GRACE-FO) missions that have greatly benefitted the modeling and monitoring of groundwater storage changes and drought at the global scale. In this chapter, we first review environmental controls on the temporal variability of groundwater using in situ data. We then describe an approach that infuses GRACE and GRACE-FO observations into a land surface model for assessing groundwater storage changes and drought globally.
Elsevier, Forensic Science International: Mind and Law, Volume 1, November 2020
Elsevier,

Choy Yee Keong, Chapter 2 - The United Nations' journey to global environmental sustainability since Stockholm: An assessment, Editor(s): Choy Yee Keong, Global Environmental Sustainability, Elsevier, 2021, Pages 7-61

This book chapter advances SDGs 13, 15, and 17 by providing perspective on what's been done so far to address environmental sustainability globally and how the goals have developed as a response to climate change.
Social media assemble multiple users' interactions across singular events. Authorities need to navigate this diversity to effectively communicate and promote collaborative strategies. During emergency situations, discerning “who is there” is even more important for authorities, as this tracing process can save lives reaching the appropriate targets. This article contributes to this problem during emergency situations by proposing a user role taxonomy. We argue that focusing on functional behaviors could bypass the complexity of defining audiences during critical events.

Background: Approximately 2·8 billion people are exposed to household air pollution from cooking with polluting fuels. Few monitoring studies have systematically measured health-damaging air pollutant (ie, fine particulate matter [PM2·5] and black carbon) concentrations from a wide range of cooking fuels across diverse populations. This multinational study aimed to assess the magnitude of kitchen concentrations and personal exposures to PM2·5 and black carbon in rural communities with a wide range of cooking environments.

Agriculture consumes huge amounts of water in China and is profoundly affected by climate change. This study projects the agricultural water use towards 2030 under the climate change mitigation target at the provincial level in China by linking a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and a regression model.
Climate change requires joint actions between government and local actors. Understanding the perception of people and communities is critical for designing climate change adaptation strategies. Those most affected by climate change are populations in coastal regions that face extreme weather events and sea-level increases. In this article, geospatial perception of climate change is identified, and the research parameters are quantified.
By mapping the state of research within each SDG area, this report acknowledges the pivotal role research plays in tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges. It aims to better understand the research community’s global sustainable development efforts and assesses the progress made, as well as unmet research needs.
RELX,

September 2020

Over the past five years, we have used data and analytics to help the research and healthcare  communities navigate the sea of research and to put collaboration, both interdisciplinary and international, at the heart of scientific progress on the SDGs. View findings for SDG 1.
RELX,

September 2020

Over the past five years, we have used data and analytics to help the research and healthcare  communities navigate the sea of research and to put collaboration, both interdisciplinary and international, at the heart of scientific progress on the SDGs. View findings for SDG 2.

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