Working Out Loud

Together with our colleague Lea Voigt from our sister project, the Data Service Center, Robin Nowok had the opportunity to present our open-source Climate Policy Vulnerability App at the UN World Data Forum in Medellín. The presentation sparked significant interest in harnessing AI for development, particularly for advancing more inclusive climate policies. Our special thanks go to our partners in the GIZ NDC Assist II programme for their invaluable contributions – without their support, our selection for the WDF probably would not have been possible.

Following the last negotiation round in April 2024, we are now gearing up for the expected final round of negotiations in November 2024 (INC-5). Together with our partners from the GO Circular project and the BMUV Plastic Treaty Support Programme, we have established guidelines and parameters for the next update iteration ahead of INC-5. In the lead-up to the negotiations, we will focus on intensive feature development to enhance the app’s user-friendliness and expand its analytical tools.

We are excited to share our newest Experiment! Partnering with local stakeholders in the Ghanaian recycling industry, we devised a plan to develop an advanced AI image recognition, which shall be integrated into local material flow processes. We imagine an application for handheld mobile devices, which allows for automatic scanning of landfill intake. Besides harmonizing stocktaking processes, working conditions of local waste collectors shall be improved by giving information about toxicity and value of different EWaste classes. Stay tuned!

Nearly two years after the instalment of the DPPD Masterclass, we are pleased to announce that a self-paced online course, “Getting Started with Data-Powered Positive Deviance,” is nearing completion. This course will allow learners to explore the stages of the DPPD methodology at their own pace.

For the DPPD Use Case in Ghana on sustainable forest management, together with colleagues from the REACH project as well as local consultants, we have successfully completed approximately 20 field trips, visiting both positive and negative deviants. Through peer group discussions, site visits, and expert interviews, we are now eager to analyze the transcriptions and extract insights into sustainable, previously undiscovered practices.

GIZ Data Lab has successfully completed a small-scale experiment together with the TUMI Initiative and the NDC Transport Initiative Asia, using generative AI to facilitate feminist city planning and spark discussions around more inclusive urban sites. Read more about it in our Blog Post.

With our “Climate Policy Vulnerability Tracker” app, we were selected from over 600 submissions for a demo session at the UN World Data Forum in Medellín, Colombia. Before the WDF starts in mid November 2024, we will continue to develop our app, add new features and finalize a case study report for all African countries (currently the report covers 10 selected countries).

We’re thrilled to share our latest blog post highlighting our Ghana Use Case. In this post, we provide an in-depth overview of the background of this project and on how we integrate satellite data with various stages of the DPPD method. Please check it out:

“From Pixels to Preservation: Utilizing Remote Sensing to Identify Community Techniques to Save Tree Cover”

GIZ Data Lab’s Event Series on Data Feminism is featured in the new Data2X Global Synthesis Report “Building Political Will for Gender Data”. The report compiles research from 30 countries, mapping the environment around the collection, analysis and use of gender data at national level in order to develop effective advocacy strategies for greater prioritization and resourcing for gender data.

Find out about our event series as an effective tool to build capacities to guarantee political support on page 4 of the report.

See the presentation of the report in this event hosted on CSW68 by Data2X and the Office of the Women’s Rights Advisor to the President of Kenya.

As of March 24, we are exploring different implementations of Data Feminism in practice: a data-feminist curriculum for university students in India, Data Feminism measures in city planning in Bangladesh and many more. Want to share your ideas for a data-feminist experiment? Get in touch!

We have successfully created a knowledge base derived on the relevant documents and submissions in the UN Plastic Treaty negotiations. This knowledge database serves as the basis for the rag pipeline, which we have effectively implemented. This breakthrough has enabled us to create the first publicly accessible prototype of our chatbot, currently undergoing testing for quality and usability.

After successful prototyping with our partners in Kenya, we have released the final app version of the “climate policy vulnerability tracker”. It can be used by all interested users on Hugging Face under the following link. But we don’t want to stop there: We are planning an interactive report that will initially take a closer look at selected SSA countries and then, towards the end of the year, examine all current African NDCs for demographic groups in vulnerable situations and prepare them visually – stay tuned!