Page 97 - GIS for Science, Volume 3 Preview

ESRI AND SDSN: GIS COLLABORATORS
One of the most important things we can do as a society at this particular time is to help bring the nations of the world together to collaborate on
and measure the progress of our collective work toward the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a crucial time for the nations of the world to work together to solve problems that transcend national borders, and which pose uniquely geographic challenges. GIS allows us to better understand these issues and measure the progress of our collective solutions.”
—Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri
SDGs Today endeavors to provide a snapshot of the state of sustainable development around the world in real time while enabling users to produce, access, and engage with timely data on sustainable development; obtain geographic information
A global hub for real-time SDG data
systems (GIS) training and education resources; and learn how to use the data effectively to drive action toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In early 2020, the SDSN partnered with Esri and the National Geographic Society to bring SDGsToday to life.
Esri possesses leading GIS technologies and training materials, and the SDSN provides a major propellant into the policy world at the highest levels and into a network of more than 1,000 universities. Working together, Esri and SDSN equip a wide audience of academics, policy makers, students, civil societies, and the public with the knowledge and tools required for evidence-based monitoring of the SDGs and for devising solutions across various communities globally.
The initiative strives to inspire and train the next generation of leaders, researchers, educators, and policy makers to cultivate the necessary knowledge and skills to carry out the implementation of the SDGs and future UN agendas. This initiative responds to the call of the UN secretary-general to accelerate sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges in the next decade.
The SDGs Today initiative aims to advance the production of real-time data and the inte- gration of geospatial information within the SDG framework, explore new data sources and methods, and accelerate the production and use of timely and spatially disaggregated data for SDGs. More than just a data storage repository, SDGs Today acts as a hub to deliver a modern map-browsing interface, making it useful to everyone, not just spatial scientists. The hub is linked at GISforScience.com.
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