Background 

Geospatial data is needed to understand our challenges toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Reliable, timely, accessible, disaggregated and detailed geospatial information must be brought to measure progress, support informed decision-making and ensure effective national programs and operations toward the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations Maps program, created in 2019, aims to provide geospatial data and services for the safe conduct of humanitarian and peace operations, to provide insights for effective programs supporting the civil society, and to monitoring and preserving our planet. The UN Maps data, tools and platforms also aim to enable the “One UN Geospatial Situation Room” and to contribute data and systems toward the aim to “Deliver as One”. 

Objective 

The conference theme around “Building greater UN Maps Together” will be an opportunity to collectively reflect on how geospatial data and services can help to deliver the collective mandates of the United Nations such as addressing climate change, sustaining food systems, ensuring universal access to care and education, and ensuring peace and justice for all countries. The conference will also present the success of the UN Maps program in the context of the peace operations where it developed a unique workflow leveraging a crowd-based data collection approach, (semi-)automated data-pipeline, online analytics tools and self-service applications. The UN Maps intends to mainstream geospatial data and insights by making it pervasive in enterprise solutions and technology to ensure accessible, secure, and interoperable data services. Participants will share their experience and discuss their current ongoing efforts within the UN Secretariat, UN System, and beyond, to develop capacities, data workflows, services, infrastructure, tools, and solutions toward addressing the challenges on peace and security, human rights, international law, development, and humanitarian aid. Participants will also discuss how these efforts could be pooled and coordinated to develop an evidence-based decision-making and data driven action plan. Participants include Geospatial professionals in the United Nations, including Specialized Agencies, Funds and Programs, Academia, Donors, Member States and other International organizations. 

Agenda 

The agenda will be organized around five main topics: 

1. Use cases: addressing our common agenda using geospatial data; 

2. Data: governance, data sources, lifecycle, management, dissemination, custodianship and gaps; 

3. Innovation and Technology: navigation, geocoding, search tools, Maps on Demand, visualization, 3D and analysis. Infrastructure, architecture and mapping visualization; 

4. Outreach and Partnerships: collaboration, capacity building, crowdsourcing, building the UN Mappers community, outreach and engagement; 

5. Business: programme governance, strategy, vision, management, resources, sustainable funding, outcomes, value and benefits.