Speaker Bio & Abstract

Janusz Dygaszewicz President
European Forum for Geography and Statistics
Poland

Biography"Director of ICT Systems, Geostatistics and CensusDepartment in the Statistics Poland.
Member of the Executive Committee of the UN-GGIM: Europe (UN Global Geospatial Information Managementfor Europe).
Member of the UNECE HLG Modernisation Group.
In Poland he is responsible for the 2010 and 2020 Population Census round, modernization and standardization of statistical production process and introduction a GIS technology into official statistics." AbstractGeospatial information has been more and more important in the world which strives to implement sustainable development into life on national, European and global level. For many indicators monitoring SDGs, statistical data with very precise location information is needed to conduct analyses which show territorial dimension and changes of different phenomena. Only official statistics has been collecting all necessary unit data with reference to points (X, Y coordinates) that is essential to produce aggregates which enable reliable geospatial analysis. Geocoded statistical data is a key element that is required to calculate various indicators which are crucial for informed decision making and monitoring SDGs.

The European Forum for Geography and Statistics (EFGS) promotes the integration of statistical and geospatial information and the use of geospatial information in decision making. EFGS became the official Observer Organization to the United Nations Global Geospatial Management for Europe (UN-GGIM: Europe) and also acts as a reference group for Eurostat and the project group for the GEOSTAT projects. These communities in their activities have noticed the importance of the territorial dimension of data to monitoring SDGs. A few geospatially referenced SDG indicators on which worked UN-GGIM: Europe WG Data Integration and also GEOSTAT 3 project have shown challenges regarding the availability and comparability of data. The internationally agreed Global Statistical Geospatial Framework (GSGF) is a proposal on which has been working the UN-GGIM Expert Group on the Integration of Statistical and Geospatial Information (EG-ISGI). This framework will provide a common method for geospatially enabling statistics in all stages of statistical production. GSGF consists of five principles that are considered essential to integrating statistical and geospatial information. Principle 3 of GSGF has been led by Statistics Poland in cooperation with Statistics Canada and will provide guidelines for a common set of geographical data, so that all statistical data have a common spatial reference. It is a key pillar on which the future of collecting and analysing of data should be based. As a result it is expected to enable new, better and more integrated information for monitoring SDGs and decision making process.