Between September 27 and 28, this great annual meeting of social impact and emerging technologies was held in Floriánopolis, Brazil, where Cepei had the opportunity to present its initiatives on the use of data for sustainable development.
The Social Good Brazil (SGB) Festival exists to contribute to a society where technology serves a better world. Combining human skills with exponential technologies and making use of data, to reach common horizons and create solutions to the real problems of society.
The SGB Festival gathers investors and experts in technology, data and social impact in Brazil and around the world. In 2019, the event reached its eighth edition with 1200 people gathered for 2 days in panels, conferences, workshops, and conversation circles. The atmosphere of the event is celebration, knowledge sharing, practical experimentation and inspiration to make people and organizations feel motivated to act and transform our society in a positive way.
Source: Social Good Brasil
The Data Coordinator of Cepei, Fredy Rodríguez, was invited to participate in three spaces of the event. The first one was an informal VIP meeting, held every year prior to the event, with investors from Social Good Brazil, where Cepei presented its working areas, initiatives and partners.
The second space in which our Data Coordinator participated was a panel on the use of data to measure progress in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, which focused on providing information on how to participate in this global agenda and efforts to monitor its progress, in order to review actions and strategies in real time.
Rodríguez presented the Unidos por los ODS initiative, a partnership of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota (CCB), the Red Pacto Global Colombia, the Fundación Bolívar Davivienda y the Fundación Corona, who joined efforts to measure the contribution of the business sector in Colombia to the SDGs. Cepei participated as a technical leader in this process and was supported by WWF on environmental issues.
The project included 21 companies from 7 sectors, among which are the 8 largest companies in the country. Some lessons learned that Rodriguez highlighted were: Building trust is key to any process; The legal area is a fundamental actor in the process and must be involved from the beginning of it; Continuous accompaniment to all the areas involved is necessary; Response times by companies are variable; SDG measurement is a multi-area commitment; The contribution to the SDGs is reflected from the daily activities carried out by companies, not only from their social responsibility.
Likewise, during the panel, the Big Data for Development (BD4D) iniciative was presented, a network formed by regional hubs in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which joined research efforts for capacity development and big data analysis for sustainable development. Cepei leads the Latin America and the Caribbean hub.
On the capacity development front, Cepei seeks to strengthen knowledge on the processing, visualization and communication of big data through training sessions such as workshops and conferences; exchange of experiences between regions and institutions through the integration of fellows to our team and the delivery of scholarships for training; the creation of partnerships between private sector companies, academia and decision makers that allow the promotion of the use and interpretation of data for sustainable development.
As for the analysis of big data, we perform it from the processing of large volumes of data with a variety of themes, taking advantage of the data that has not currently been connected with sustainable development and its benefits for decision making.
And in the area of research, Cepei works on projects on the use of big data and its implications, aimed at actors of the data ecosystem. This in order to identify opportunities and challenges of using big data for sustainable development.
Finally, Cepei was also the keynote speaker at the Conference “How have data contributed to mitigating the impacts of a natural disaster in Colombia?, where we present two projects.
The first of them, “Rebuilding Mocoa”, is developed within the framework of the Partnership between Telefónica and Cepei. In 2017, an avalanche was generated by the overflow of three rivers, which left the municipality of Mocoa a balance of: 332 dead; 398 injured, 220 missing persons and 22,322 victims.
The objective of the initiative is to identify the impact generated by this natural disaster on human mobility inside and outside the Department of Putumayo, through the use of mobile data generated from the monitoring of telephone records (calls) made in Mocoa.
The exercise allowed us to demonstrate that it is possible to incorporate non-traditional data sources into SDGs measurement, as well as to generate an impact on the decision-making process in the area of public policy for data-based risk management.
Likewise, the Data Coordinator of Cepei presented “Biodiversity in Costa Rica”, an initiative that seeks to explore the species of endangered plants to identify which ones are in the conservation areas. Plant inventory data was obtained with the support of the National Museum of Costa Rica. The investigation showed that 40% of endangered plant species are outside protected areas.
