United Nations Statistical Commission

This Statistical - Geospatial Integration Side Event seeks to bring together actors and experts to discuss and deliberate on the delivery of integrated high-quality, accessible, timely and reliable data to support, track and inform on progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda at all levels. The integration of statistical Earth observations and geospatial information, including data disaggregation, are critical to achieving the overarching principle of the 2030 Agenda, to leave no one behind.

The 2016 Sustainable Development Goals Report emphasised the importance of coordinated global datageneration efforts. The 2030 Agenda recognizes the need for new sources of data and information including exploiting geospatial and Earth observations that can unlock the wealth of information over space and time - about people and society and their interactions with their place and environment. Geospatial information and Earth observations, together with statistics, are able to provide consistent and comparable data and the integrative and enabling fabric across a number of national information systems in the provision of data and information for effective policy and decision making for sustainable development.

This side event aims to demonstrate and discuss in practical detail how geospatial and Earth observations can provide the integrative and enabling fabric for the provision and generation of information that will support the global indicator framework and its metadata. The side event follows from the Statistical-Geospatial Integration Forum (6th March 2017, 09:00 a.m. - 13:00 p.m.) and is supported by the UN Statistical Commission and the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

Brief Outline of the Session

The moderator will introduce the session with some introductory remarks before inviting the panellists to make their presentations. The assembled panel for this side event, together with the participants, are expected to engage and interact in an open discussion that follows after all of the presentations are delivered. This facilitated open discussion portion of the side event would be about 30 min in duration.

Programme Agenda

Moderator:

1. Mr. Greg Scott – UNSD/UN-GGIM Secretariat

Panellists:

2. Mr. Rolando Ocampo – Co-Chair UN-GGIM and Co-Chair, IAEG-SDGs Working Group on Geospatial Information, Vice President, National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico
3. Mr. William A Sonntag – IAEG-SDGs: WGGI Task Team Lead, Secretariat, Group on Earth Observations (GEO)
4. Mr. Yoshiaki Kinoshita/Mr. Chu Ishida – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency & GEO-EO4SD Initiative, Japan
5. Mr. Jim Yoon – Belmont Forum e-Infrastructures and Data Management Project, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University, USA

Open Discussion