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 with informal consultation in 2009): UN Committee on Global Geospatial Information Management Creation by UNSC and UN-GGIM of the United Nations Expert Group on the Integration of Statistical and Geospatial Information; Co-Chairs: Peter Harper (Australia) and Rolando Ocampo (Mexico); 1st meeting 30 Oct-1 Nov 2013, NY Since 2010, each session of the UN Statistical Commission discussed a report on geospatial information, more recently on the integration of statistical and geospatial information International workshop on integrating geospatial and statistical information (June 2014, Beijing) Global Forum on the integration of statistical and geospatial infromation (August 2014, New York)

6. Regional GGIM structures UN GGIM ̶ Asia-Pacific UN GGIM ̶ Americas UN GGIM ̶ Arab States UN GGIM ̶ Europe (first meeting: Chisinau, Moldova, 1 October 2014) UN GGIM ̶ 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 and geospatial 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 Development Agenda, 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 technical level To discuss a mechanism, such as a global statistical geospatial framework, 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 integrating diverse 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