Data Science For A Better Future

Deluge of Data

In a world abundant of Data, the question emerges, how could data science improve sustainable development to achieve better prosperity and well-being for mankind?

We are generating data more than we used to generate before. In 2019 on each minute on the internet we have about 3.8 million search on Google, and more than one million logging on Facebook. Generating data became inexpensive and available and nearly each movement of one human being would generate data but the question is how this data could turn into something useful that has the capacity to improve human life? The answer is data science.

Data as Science

Data science is the use of scientific methods and processes to understand data and to analyze it, in order to extract valuable insight from it to solve a chronic problem or to predict a path which could be beneficial or adverse.

Data Science to Solve Chronic Development Problems

When The UN issued The Sustainable Development Goals, they were established after extensive and dedicated research to identify the most pressing and urging problems and dilemmas that need quick and effective action in order to ensure transformation of our world for a better future for mankind.

Starting with No Poverty and ending with Partnership for the goals, The SDGs are almost cross-cutting all the different disciplines of human life, but still these goals with their targets and indicators are holistic approaches need further digging to explore underneath difficulties that may hinder achievement of SDGs.

This digging could not be performed without accurate diagnosis for the development troubles, since each society has its own complications, the precise diagnosis is extremely crucial to ensure the proper treatment has been in place, and this precise diagnosis could not be implemented without accurately analysed data that shows what is the trouble, what is its magnitude, what are the priorities that must be considered and where the treatment must be. Since a society may suffer from poor health services, and an other one may have climate change consequences, here comes the role of data which describes precisely and accurately the challenges and opportunities to ensure the available resources have been mobilized in an efficient manner.

Data Initiatives to Improve Sustainable Development

Harnessing data to explore the possible answers for sustainable development dilemmas requires three main pillars, the first one is the educated workforce, ready and has the necessary scientific backgrounds to tackle the data challenge in order to perform the necessary operations starting with data cleansing, ending with analyzing and visualizing it on an appropriate platform to facilitate identifying the challenges and the required resources. The second pillar is the technology needed to perform the required operations and the third one is the data itself.

Using Data for tackling sustainable development challenges does not require starting from scratch, there are already several initiatives which could be considered as a backbone for further analysis and investigations.

Gap minder is an example for such data initiatives, a Fact Tank as they said about themselves with a lot of indicators regarding Environment, Energy, Infrastructure and others indicators related to sustainable development and prosperity.

Energy Trilemma index is another index tool published by World Energy Council. In this index the countries are ranked based on their capacities to provide sustainable energy through three perspectives or dimensions: Energy security, Energy equity and Environmental sustainability.

Last but not least, The Global Carbon Atlas which is an online platform used to visualize and interpret carbon data that arise from both human activities and natural processes on both globally and regionally dimensions.

Finally, with nowadays advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, sustainable development issues must come on the top of the global agenda and the question must be how these emerging technologies could save humanity from the dire consequences of the Anthropocene?.