In 2020, every human on Earth created an average of at least 1.7 megabytes of data per second, collectively amassing 2.5 . Some was created in the last two years alone.
Globally, companies are undergoing transformations including the use of digital technologies to create new or modified processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market expectations.
The COVID , and by 2022 an estimated 70% of global gross domestic product will have gone through some form of digitisation, the result of an estimated US in investments.
This exponential growth of big data availability is propelling disruptive technologies like those using artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain, and cloud computing, which all significantly alter how consumers, industries, or businesses operate.
Data-fueled artificial intelligence applications alone are projected to generate additional economic activity of around US. Because of this value generation capability, data is considered the .
However, the trend from the last decade shows that, just like oil, the hot spots to generate and create value from . We are witnessing the creation of a data-impoverished Global South, which cannot reap the financial benefits or use data to address challenges like massive forest fires, water scarcity, floods, droughts, and other manifestations of the changing climate.
It is alarming that, despite the much talked-about explosion in data generation, critical high-quality data for global, regional, and national development is lacking. Major gaps are opening between the data haves and have-nots.
Unfortunately, the have-nots include the majority of countries facing challenges like , , , and , which require quality data to be generated and processed to create actionable information and knowledge.
Today, in the Global South water data collection tends to focus on individual development projects, spawning a patchwork of data sets of short time duration, restricted spatial coverage, and limited availability.
This decline is most evident in Africa, where the density of water-data collection networks has been over time and falls far below World Meteorological Organization (WMO) guidelines.
In the last two decades alone, the majority of new stations established to report to WMO’s Global Runoff Data Center are located in “new oil”-rich countries. According to the , gauging stations in North America outnumber those in the 20 most water-stressed countries by more than 10-1. Similar data inequality exists for and .
In the last decade, remote sensing data coupled with cloud computing has shown promise to and is successfully used to of surface water bodies over a period of time.
However, the lack of traceable ground truth observations against which to validate the satellite observations is a , essentially making the remote sensing data unfit to be used as part of water-related decision support systems. Also, the remote sensing data has failed to accurately quantify parameters like and where the data gaps are most prominent in the Global South.
In addition to the lack of water data faucets, the uncoordinated and unmonitored data generation efforts in the Global South are leading to the creation of data wastelands, where more than .
Converting this unstructured data to actionable information is expensive; cleansing and deduplicating a record can cost as much as US. This , essentially shutting out the Global South from the economic activity, social, and climate change mitigation benefits these technologies provide.
Given the rise in the severity and frequency of water-related challenges, it is essential to address the data inequality-related issues to achieve the water-related Sustainable Development Goals in this decade.
The solution includes Global North leadership in the new world data order to share their data and information-related technologies with the Global South to help generate quality and actionable data at a global and national scale.
The Global North must also commit to water science capacity building by funding operation monitoring, data rescue and updates, and training of water scientists. Given the international nature of emerging water resource issues, the commitment and support of the entire global community is required to reverse the ongoing decline of critical water data sets.
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This article was by .
Suggested citation: Hamid Mehmood. "Data Drought in the Global South," 糖心Vlog破解版, 糖心Vlog破解版 Centre, 糖心Vlog破解版-INWEH, 2021-11-08, /article/data-drought-global-south.
