Enhancing Utilization of Data for SDG Acceleration and create knowledge ecosystems in the city space

Our challenge is that the use of data and actionable intelligence that can be generated from data analysis are not adequately utilised in policy decisions and improving public service delivery in the context of urban living.

Despite rapid urbanization and digitalization, opportunities and resources are unevenly distributed in the Maldives. With the dense population and concentrated investment in the Greater Male' Region, infrastructure, public services, and business development has been heavily skewed towards this region, leading to imbalanced access to quality service in education, healthcare, housing, transportation and economic opportunities for the other islands. The consequent domestic migration to Malé creates a vicious cycle, further intensifying social inequalities as domestic migrants face a stronger pressure on living cost and raise the demand for more public services in the Greater Male' Region, which in turn lead to more investment being directed there rather than other islands.  Given its archipelagic geography and widely dispersed population across atolls, the Maldives is also restricted in diverse income channels that creates economies of scale. Provision of decentralized public service in the islands is also a continued challenge due to this reason. Climate change has compounded these vulnerabilities, with Maldives being prone to multiple climate-related risks including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, rapid and slow on-set natural disasters.   All these accumulative factors have affected people’s quality of life and impede sustained development across the streams of governance, economic development, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Hulhumale', a reclaimed island city in the Greater Male' Region is being developed as a long-term solution to many of the recurrent problems and is now home to over 90,000 residents.   While additional land may relieve some of the issues or their symptoms, for promoting inclusive growth for Hulhumale', it is important to understand people’s needs for a better quality of life, and based on that, design the built environment, public policies and services. Undoubtedly, relevant data channelled from various sources and actionable intelligence generated from the data analysis can be used to make better policies, better decisions in the investment deployment and improve public service delivery. The Housing Development Corporation (HDC), the state-owned enterprise as the master planner, developer and regulator of Hulhumale' is extremely well position to demonstrate the value of data for decision making to meet the demands of people to ensure economic prosperity, social and environmental sustainability that has direct impact on the community and their quality of life.

UNDP Maldives Accelerator Lab will work with Housing Development Corporation to demonstrate a new development paradigm to promote local economic prosperity, embrace social inclusion, create resilient and sustainable environment, enable participatory and anticipatory governance, and offer higher quality of life for the communities driven by the advance of technology, and data innovation. As such, we will work towards:  1) harnessing the power of data to map the liveability of islands to understand the communities’ needs for higher quality of life and assess the services provision;  2) utilizing the actionable intelligence generated from the data analysis for decision-making, specifically for the urban development of Hulhumalé;   3) adopting a human-centered design principle to enable the community to participate in the development of solutions; and   4) enabling a learning ecosystem by creating and curating space for planners, policy makers and city/local councils to exchange knowledge and experience on utilizing data for inclusive, sustainable development.   This initiative also taps into the ‘3*6*3’ framework of the UNDP Strategic Plan 2022-2025. More specifically, Accelerator Lab methodologies and approaches will be applied throughout the initiative. These include citizen-centered methodologies to develop a local liveability index. In additional to conventional data sources, new data sources will be explored. Addressing complex development challenges like improving the prosperity and livability in a city will need a systemic mindset and a portfolio approach which constitutes of a suite of concerted interventions that acts at different levels. Building on the existing portfolio of interventions, the project will add significant value to it by providing reliable and actionable data-informed intelligence to support the strategic decision on the improvement of current interventions and design of new interventions, through different stakeholders. Learning cycles will be carried out to co-design and test at least one innovative solution aimed at better quality of life for the community. Furthermore, human-centered design principle will be adopted to to enable the community to participate in the development of solutions. The power of collective intelligence will be demonstrated via the convening of central and local government partners, stakeholders and communities to share and exchange knowledge. 

Our collaboration with Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and Maldives Bureau of Statistics (MBS) aspires to contribute to create a new development paradigm for Hulhumale’ - a future where citizen-centered participation & participatory decision making in urban planning is welcomed through data analytics & innovation. 

How might we build a co-learning ecosystem geared towards enhancing urban public policy and urban public service delivery through data-driven analytics, citizen-centred, inclusive, sustainable and systemic approaches.

Solutions Mapping: Solutions mapping will be used to identify and collate exiting solutions that exists within the community that addresses urban liveability issues. This would help in elevating grassroot innovation  Data visualisation: Data collected will be integrated in a data dashboard that will demonstrate the key aspects of liveability index and various data sets that shows the quality of urban life in Hulhumalé. The digital data platform will put inclusivity at the heart of design to ensure the digital dividends can be shared and enjoyed by the communities as much as possible, especially for the marginalized and vulnerable communities  Collective Intelligence (CI): CI will be used and applied throughout the project to ensure the knowledge and expertise of a diverse groups of people at each stage. Since the actionable intelligence for policy design and service provision will be informed by data, including citizen provided data, the solution will ensure good quality of the data representation among different segments of the population.  Co-creation: Co-creation will ensure that the inputs from the community and stakeholders are taken into consideration in shaping each output of the initiative. Building on the existing portfolio of interventions, the initiative will add significant value to it by providing reliable and actionable data-informed intelligence to support the strategic decision on the improvement of current interventions and design of new interventions, through different stakeholders. 

Geospatial data is an emerging area of expertise and a very new source of data in terms of the extent to which it is used in studies and initiatives and the local technical capacity is also limited. HDC has this capacity in-house, and is currently collecting a rich source of geospatial data. Inclusion of this geospatial data will allow for innovative ways to analyse urban issues. HDC also collects sensor and sensor network data which also a rare source of data in the country. The inclusion of this data will give us a better understanding of how these sources can be utilised in urban studies and initiatives and also socialise the community and stakeholders on the importance and usability of these data sources.

Other City Councils of the Maldives  Ministry of Housing and Infrastructure