Development Gateway
Spiros Voyadzis of DGI
Spiros Voyadzis and Anna Lauridsen from the DGI Brussels office attended the 7th EDDs and presented a session on geocoding entitled “Data Visualization for Development Planning” focused on the Climate Change and African Political Stability Dashboards (CCAPS), which track conflict and environmental conditions across Africa, plus all aid projects in Malawi.
The basis for this work is geocoding, which is the process of tagging aid activity records with precise geographical information, identifying the district, town, or even latitude and longitude where a project is active. While geocoding of aid activities answers questions of who is doing what and where, the dashboards demonstrate how combining open data and visualisation techniques can produce information on the performance and impact of projects. This enables donors, recipients, and civil society organizations to more easily understand where aid activities are taking place, to monitor implementation, and to evaluate their effectiveness.
The session highlighted what the powerful combination of geographical data and visualisation techniques can achieve by demonstrating how investments in various development sectors can be more successfully targeted thanks to better informed decisions based on data visualizations of aid activities. On a larger scale, this also indicates how open data and geocoding can contribute to attaining the EU’s objectives following the Busan HLF on aid effectiveness, by improving donor coordination, facilitating the division of labour, and reducing aid fragmentation in partner countries.
Spiros Voyadzis of DGI
Spiros Voyadzis and Anna Lauridsen from the DGI Brussels office attended the 7th EDDs and presented a session on geocoding entitled “Data Visualization for Development Planning” focused on the Climate Change and African Political Stability Dashboards (CCAPS), which track conflict and environmental conditions across Africa, plus all aid projects in Malawi.
The basis for this work is geocoding, which is the process of tagging aid activity records with precise geographical information, identifying the district, town, or even latitude and longitude where a project is active. While geocoding of aid activities answers questions of who is doing what and where, the dashboards demonstrate how combining open data and visualisation techniques can produce information on the performance and impact of projects. This enables donors, recipients, and civil society organizations to more easily understand where aid activities are taking place, to monitor implementation, and to evaluate their effectiveness.
The session highlighted what the powerful combination of geographical data and visualisation techniques can achieve by demonstrating how investments in various development sectors can be more successfully targeted thanks to better informed decisions based on data visualizations of aid activities. On a larger scale, this also indicates how open data and geocoding can contribute to attaining the EU’s objectives following the Busan HLF on aid effectiveness, by improving donor coordination, facilitating the division of labour, and reducing aid fragmentation in partner countries.