Geo-statistics: a partnership between the geospatial and the statistical community

1. Geo-statistics:a partnership between the geospatial and the statistical community Gabriella Vukovich, President of HCSO (Hungary), Acting Chair of UNSC IAOS 2014 Conference on Official Statistics Meeting the demands of a changing world 8-10 October 2014 Da Nang, Viet Nam Theme 3: Building partnerships to enhance the value of official statistics: Towards a global statistical - geospatial framework

2. John Snow’s map: clusters of cholera cases, London epidemic, 1854

3. From census cartography to geostatistics • Census cartography since the 19th century – delineation of enumeration districts, presentation of data at various subnational (later cross-country) levels • Gradual change in users’ needs: recognition of the value of linking socio-economic information to location for understanding causal relationships, for evidence-based decision-making, for improving the lives of people • Increasing demand for information linked to location about people, health, wellbeing, businesses, economic performance and potential, environment, risks, hazards, sustainable development etc. • Availability of new and enhanced methodologies and infrastructure to produce information at very granular levels • Result: combining statistics with geospatial information creates unprecedented analytic potential

4. Partners and Stakeholders • Active partners • GGIM Committee of Experts • UN Statistical Commission • Regional GGIM structures • National initiatives • Beneficiaries • Users of information • The partnerships will enable statisticians and researchers to produce fit for purpose results; ultimately people will benefit from better research outcomes and more targeted decisions due to innovations and improvements in data and information technology

5. International coordination efforts • Creation of UN GGIM (starting withinformalconsultationin 2009): UN Committeeon Global GeospatialInformationManagement • CreationbyUNSC and UN-GGIM of theUnited NationsExpert Group ontheIntegration of Statistical and GeospatialInformation; Co-Chairs: Peter Harper (Australia) and RolandoOcampo (Mexico); 1st meeting 30 Oct-1 Nov 2013, NY • Since 2010, each session of the UN StatisticalCommissiondiscussed a reportongeospatialinformation, more recentlyontheintegration of statistical and geospatialinformation • International workshoponintegratinggeospatial and statisticalinformation (June 2014, Beijing) • Global Forum ontheintegration of statistical and geospatialinfromation (August 2014, New York)

6. Regional GGIM structures • UN GGIM ̶ Asia-Pacific • UN GGIM̶ Americas • UN GGIM̶ Arab States • UN GGIM̶ Europe (first meeting: Chisinau, Moldova, 1 October 2014) • UN GGIM̶ Africa

7. UNSC - ABS global programme review - Backround • UN SG noted that a better integration of statistics with geospatial information is crucial for sound and evidence based decision-making • Users of statistics: Increasing demand for location linked information, to better understand issues at local levels and interrelationships between social, environmental and economic issues • Users of geospatial infermation: Recognition that using socio-economic information adds value to the traditional focus of the geospatial community on natural and man-made environment • Geospatial information can be the link that enables the integration of location based information derived from various disparate sources • ABS undertook to conduct a programme review on behalf of the UNSC to identify • the geospatial capabilities and activities of NSOs • existing cooperation between NSOs and national geospatial authorities • institutional arrangements for the collaboration of between NSOs and geospatial agencies

8. Programme review – main findings • Drivers • policies with people in the focus (health, education, social welfare) • urban planning, land administration • emergency management, national security • increasing interest from researchers, businesses and the general public • Spatial capabilities in NSOs • significant diversity in capabilities and wide range of levels of engagement • recognition of the need for georeferenced statistics • recognition of the benefits of location linked statistics (e.g. more focused policies and responses, identifying patterns that are not easily seen without location based information) • Institutional arrangements – strong predictors of the ability to integrate statistics and geospatial information • fully integrated • separate but closely linked • separate • Geographic boundaries used by statisticians • currently mostly administrative boundaries, with some functional geographies and grid-based systems

9. Programme review – recommendations • Establish an Expert Group with a view to developing a global framework, and propose guidelines to advance the implementation of the global framework • Convene an international conference on the integration of statistical and geospatial information ( Global Forum 2014) • Promote the creation of formalised cooperation linkages between statistical and geospatial organisations

10. UNSC/UN-GGIM partnership: First Global Forum on the Intagration of Statistical and Geospatial Information(4-5 August 2014, NY) • Background:both UNSC and UN-GGIM expressed the need • to integrate statistics and geospatial information and • to develop a statistical-geospatial framework as a global standard for the integration of statistical and geospatial information • Objectives of the Global Forum • To develop a strategic vision and goals for the integration of statistical andgeospatial information by bringing together statisticians and representatives of the geospatial agencies to a common platform • To better understand emerging agendas (e.g. the Post-2015 DevelopmentAgenda, the 2020 Round of Population Censuses, a global map for sustainable development) and their information needs • To jointly set the direction for technical capacity development • To jointly acknowledge the importance of the integration of statistical and geospatial information to give authority to international collaboration efforts at the operational and technicallevel • To discuss a mechanism, such as a global statistical geospatialframework, to facilitate consistent production and integration approaches for geo-statistical information

11. Key messages • Institutional coordination and cooperation between statistical and geospatial agencies is a prerequisite of the consistent integration of statistical and geospatial information • Institutional coordination and cooperation requires strong political commitment • Urgent need for a global statistical-geospatial framework to facilitate the consistent production and release of geostatistics • The statistical-geospatial framework has a vital role to play in integratingdiverse economic, social and environmental information to support more robust decision-making at subnational (local), national, regional and global levels –national efforts are on the way, their streamlining is needed • Integration of statistical and geospatial and big data as well as other non traditional sources of data is necessary to fulfil user needs • Granularity vs privacy –confidentiality has to be observed as data are detailed at smaller and smaller geographic levels; legislative and methodological development necessary • Develop, adopt and implement common terminologies, technical standards, metadata and share agreed protocols • Adding geospatial capability to statistics requires the codification of location attributes linked to socio-economic information • Share experience about geocoding address information in the data management system of NSOs

12. Levels and types of parnerships • Establishing frameworks of cooperation • UN GGIM – UNSC • national statistical offices – national geospatial information authorities • Other public – public partnerships • Partnerships between public institutions and businesses • Multilateral partnerships • Creating the conditions of integrating statistics and geospatial information • Legislation • Resource allocation • Standardisation, frameworks, methodologies • Share good practices • Continued availability of geospatial and big data – flexibility of official statistics and of geostatistics production in case data sources fade away

13. Challenges • Cost of IT and statistical infrastructure investments, software development • Operational cost of generating robust, internationally comparable small area data • Data fusion – integrating data from different and often incongruous sources • Limited geospatial capability in many NSOs, limited statistical capability in national geospatial agencies • Cooperation mechanisms between various actors involved (official statistics, owners of administrative data, owners of big data, national geospatial authorities) are not yet well established in many countries

14. Opportunities • 2020 Round of Censuses offers an opportunity to enhance geospatial capabilites of NSOs • Post 2015 development agenda: the Data Revolution concept around the emerging SDGs calls for robust data at very granular levels of geography • Use these opportunities to build a common linking approach to realise the full potential of the benefit of linking statistics and geospatial information • consistency and comparability across countries and within countries • an internationally consistent approach can lead to the shared development of IT tools and applications • Spread existing national good practices (e.g. ABS Statistical Spatial Framework which builds on the National Address Management Framework; Hungary is building something similar) • Infrastructure transformation in NSOs offers an opportunity to incorporate geospatial linkage • Capacity building in NSOs and geospatial agencies

15. Thank you for your attention. vukovich.gabriella@ksh.hu