Guest author, Grant Cameron, highlights emerging lessons from national statistical offices during the Covid-19 pandemic and shares key focus areas to further support NSOs’ resilience and modernization. These include: the development of a business continuity framework; the documentation of successful processes and pathways for real-time NSO engagement with policymakers; and the development of strategies that reinforce modernization post-Covid-19.
Read MoreAs the world continues to face the immense challenges posed by Covid-19, nontraditional data sources, including gridded population data, play an important role in tracking the virus’ spread and ensuring that no one is left behind. Gridded population maps distribute data using grid cells, combining census results with additional information, such as geospatial data from satellites, to provide more accurate and timely population estimates. However, as our recent report on gridded population data and joint webinar with the International Science Council revealed, while they offer great promise, many policymakers and researchers are still largely unaware of gridded population data, particularly their nuances and potential applications for sustainable development and Covid-19.
Read MoreCovid-19 has brought to light many of the barriers to evidence-based and data-based policy-making. In this blog, SDSN TReNDS’ expert member, Jonathan Glennie, explores these barriers and shares what’s needed to overcome them.
Read MoreDuring the current health crisis, knowing where people are located, what conditions they are facing, and their access to basic services and infrastructure is essential. Helping to answer these key needs, gridded population data have emerged and can play an important role in mapping individuals’ vulnerability and ensuring that no one is left behind. Gridded (or raster) population maps represent the distribution of population in rows and columns of grid cells, typically defined by their latitude-longitude coordinates. Population data is redistributed across these grid cells and combined with satellite imagery and other sources to provide more accurate and timely population estimates. Yet, as TReNDS’ recent report, Leaving No One Off The Map: A Guide To Gridded Population Data For Sustainable Development, demonstrates, many policymakers and other users remain largely unaware of these tools, including their nuances and strengths and weakness for potential application. There is a critical need for more validation work and capacity-building in countries. These issues were highlighted during a recent virtual debate, “How Can We Leverage Population Data In A Time Of Crisis,” hosted by TReNDS in partnership with SciDev.net.
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 MoreTReNDS hosted an expert discussion on data for development on the sidelines of the 51st session of the UN Statistical Commission. The breakfast event took place on 3 March 2020, and featured remarks by several experts from the TReNDS network. The discussion highlighted as a key issue the lack of data currently available on SDG indicators, saying significant gaps exist in data timeliness, represented geographies, and other factors.
Read MoreThe 2030 SDG Agenda promises to leave no one behind, but to fulfill this promise we need quality, timely, and accurate population data to account for everyone everywhere. Recent innovations in geospatial technology and remote sensing have paved the way for gridded population datasets to help fill these important gaps, but information is still lacking on their unique characteristics, potential, and limitations. These issues were highlighted during this week’s webinar, “Leaving No One off the Map: Gridded Population Data for Decision-Making,” hosted by TReNDS in partnership with Geospatial World Media featuring TReNDS Co-Chair and Director of CIESIN, Bob Chen, and TReNDS Manager, Maryam Rabiee.
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Insights from a roundtable discussion hosted by SDSN TReNDS, identify how governments need to change to support the creation and maintenance of the data required to achieve the SDGs. The role of traditional versus new data collection methods, policy and regulatory needs for data governance, and what a national data ecosystem should look like were among the topics debated. The learnings from the roundtable, along with the report “Counting on the World to Act,” will provide analysis and evidence-based solutions for government actors to take the much-needed steps toward achieving the data revolution.
Read More‘Driving science to action’ was a critical theme at the 2019 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting where TReNDS, alongside CIESIN and GPSDD, presented on how to make information about integrating new data sources for population estimates more accessible to policymakers as well as insights from our forthcoming report, Leaving No One Off the Map: How Gridded Population Data Can Help Realize a More Sustainable World.
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 MoreTReNDS member Samantha Custer leads AidData’s efforts to produce rigorous analysis of official finance investments worldwide, conduct performance assessments of the development cooperation activities of governments and international organizations, and more.
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