Big Data & the Sustainable Development Goals: Measuring & Achieving Development Progress in the Big Data Era

Name: Pornthiya Tungkijrat (唐夕雅) 
Student ID: M0869827 

 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outline explicit, time-bound, and measurable targets for national development plans in sync with global concerns for climate security, equality, and development. With 169 multi-dimensional targets to be achieved by 2030, this ambitious program requires 232 statistical indicators or performance metrics from every country to monitor progress towards the SDGs.

Although this data collecting and storing capacity opens up incredible opportunities for monitoring, analyzing, and addressing inequality and under-development, the collection of granular data of developing economies by the National Statistical Systems is a difficult feat and spells trouble for the adequate implementation of the SDGs. There is still a systemic lag in the availability, access, and usability of this critical data for the countries most in need.
The United Nations has taken steps to better realize the opportunities presented by big data for the “global collective” while remaining in line with privacy concerns, ethics, and state sovereignty.

Big Problems 

With many developing countries having limited resources and under-developed data collection systems to compile basic socio-economic statistics, the key issue is whether the SDGs and the production of new indicators are realistic and attainable globally. Data is critical for global, regional, and national policymaking, and without access to raw material, accountability for national development, and a genuine effort to meet SDGs is questionable.

In many countries facing the worst inequality indicators, including many nations in South East Asia, downstream data needs are fundamentally neglected. Additionally, for developed countries, although national interest and ownership are mentioned, the national collection of data and the degree of data sharing is ignored. Rather, a general encouragement of openness defines the SDGs.  In this way, there is a high risk of inequality and bias, with concerning gaps between the data haves and have-nots already expanding. Factors such as language, poverty, lack of education and technology infrastructure are all goals to be addressed by the SDGs but are contributing issues crippling the use of big data to achieve such goals.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Big Data Can Boost Weather Forecasting

張岳庭 D0741017 Source:  https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/02/how-big-data-can-boost-weather-forecasting/ Considering the number of variables involved and the complex interactions between these variables, weather forecasting has always been extremely challenging. The significant increase in data collection and processing capabilities has greatly improved the ability of weather forecasters to pinpoint the time and severity of hurricanes, floods, snowstorms and other weather events. Globally, more and more evidence of climate change is prompting governments and scientists to take action to protect people and property from its effects. But to take effective measures, they need to know more about the weather-from everything that will happen tomorrow to what will happen next year. According to the professor of economics and finance , Alan Anderson, PhD , “Example of an application of big data to weather forecasting is IBM’s Deep Thunder. Unlike many weather forecasting systems...
Read more

How Big Data is Changing the Production Industry

Blog#4 : How Big Data is Changing the Production Industry Name : Aileen 蔣慧玲 Student ID : D0726917 Source :   https://www.productionhub.com/blog/post/how-big-data-is-changing-the-production-industry Information technology plays a major role in Hollywood. Producers have to use big data analytics to get the right consumers and communicate with them well. Big data technologies will help filmmakers figure out the best ways to share their ideas and deliver messages, develop movies and content that involve ethical and societal issues. Therefore, information that we can get from the help of big data can help filmmakers make key decisions. Big Data is Changing the Production Game Big data technology can help filmmakers to connect and engage with consumers more directly using social media, mobile devices and traditional advertising outlets. Using this technology, producers can develop promotions that reaches the right consumer at the right time. It is not enough just to mainta...
Read more

Big Data case study: 5 relevant examples from the airline industry

D0740712 Connie  吳霈晴 Website: https://blog.datumize.com/5-relevant-examples-of-a-big-data-case-study-from-the-airline-industry With the summer vacation coming, travel is the one that people love to do during vacation, especially long vacation, going abroad may be the first choice for many travelers. So this makes me think of what is the relationship between big data and airplanes? How will it apply on the airline industry? This article tells about the benefits of big data on airlines, which covers three main advantages. 1.      Smarter maintenance 2.      Safer flights 3.      Improve service The first one includes the fuel of airplane, by analyzing and predicting, the article takes some specific airplane company as an example, giving the real number and how much they save the cost. Second, safety. Like this kind of transportation has a higher risk to take, if have the big data’s help, th...
Read more