Tracking Poverty Through Google Earth
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) worked with Cisco to develop a Web site that will provide virtual updates on participating regions via Google Earth. Users can “fly” to certain countries and view their progress on issues like hunger, universal primary education, gender equality, combating diseases like HIV/AIDS and environmental sustainability.
Google will add an MDG Monitor tab into Google Earth by next week, according to a spokeswoman. It will appear automatically and not require an update.
UNDP reached out to Google and Cisco because – after seven years – the “global scorecard [on poverty] is mixed,” UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis said at a Thursday press conference in Manhattan. “We are facing a development emergency” and a “degree of poverty that’s no longer acceptable.”
For the first time, policymakers and stakeholders will have the necessary data in a central location, Dervis said. Data will be culled from participating countries and vetted through the UN’s Statistics Division, he said.
Data collection can be difficult because of participation rates as well as the sheer amount of data that needs to be collected, Dervis said. “The UN … is using this data, but it is not the creator of this data,” he said. As a result, it will be analyzed by the UN for accuracy as much as possible.
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