Regional Event Highlights Potential for Digital Technologies to Address Global Challenges

Climate change adaptation and mitigation, rapid urbanization, increasing natural disasters, migration issues and unresolved humanitarian conflicts are some of today’s global challenges.

More than 200 experts from 21 countries and 12 international organizations met in Vrdnik, Serbia at the international conference: Digitally enabled development for a sustainable future in Eastern Europe, to discuss how digital technologies, data, related policies and legislation help address these complex challenges.

The three-day event brought together experts from the public sector, civil society, academia, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector to explore and discuss regional opportunities in implementing digital technologies when tackling global issues. The event gave particular emphasis to the technological enablers of digital transformation, digital data, good tenure governance, and innovative services and applications.

The conference was jointly organized by the Serbian Republic Geodetic Authority, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management in Europe (UN-GGIM: Europe), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Mr. Greg Scott, from the UN-GGIM UN Statistics Division, and Mr. Tomaž Petek, Chair of UN-GGIM: Europe, participated in the conference providing presentations about the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) and the work of the UN-GGIM: Europe Committee. IGIF is a United Nations endorsed Framework that was developed in collaboration between the United Nations and the World Bank, originally to provide a basis and guide for lower to middle income countries to reference when developing and strengthening their national and sub-national arrangements in geospatial information management and related infrastructures.

Further information about the event can be found here.