Implementing the GEOSTAT Vision – a 10 points program towards a European

statistical-spatial framework – in memoriam Lars H. Backer

Ekkehard PetriEurostat

The GEOSTAT Vision

We as civil servants, members of the academia, or citizens of democratic

nations are united here for one overriding purpose:

To produce systems of qualified information to serve as foundation for direct and indirect government action on all levels of public authority from

local to global.This is the sustainable development

challenge!

Thesis

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Spaceship Earth

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Solvable Problems?

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Government user needs

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Inactive Reactive Preactive Interactive

Russell Ackoff’s Strategies of management:

Ex-post Strategies(Conservative “Business as usual” attitude)

Statistics for accounting and benchmarking

Ex-ante StrategiesFor critical problems the demands response(Progressive “Lets face it” attitude”)Statistics for spatial and temporal analysis

Government user needs

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• To control man environmental systems– Exploit opportunities– Counter threats

• Through direct actions (concrete projects) – Examples

• Build (or supervise) large-scale physical infrastructures• Protect natural resources for sustainable use

• Through in-direct actions (legislation)

Implementing the Vision – GGIS

Systems Theory(The world as a system of systems in

space and time)

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The world is complex beyond human understanding.Systems theory is a strategy to reduce this complexity down to a scale and complexity that can be described understood

by human beings.Task: To describe the world as a system of systems using

qualified temporal-spatial information.

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Model

To become useful this information has to be re- structured andreduced to the mere necessities!

Knowledge an integrated system (based on (scientific) expost perspective) , but not very practical (useful for the development of man environmental systems)!

Double perspective : (1) ” Interacting wholes” and (2) ”Kit of Parts”

The Object approach

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Time Space/Scale Statistics

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The Man-Environmental System described according to the ecological method

Focus:•BE: Man-made environment

– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 1)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 2– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme ...n)

Context:•NE: Natural environment

– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 1)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 2– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme ...n)

•ES: Economic system– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 1)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 2)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme ...n)

•SS: Sociocultural system– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 1)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme 2)– Layer ((maps &statistics) theme ...n)

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Reduce complexity – scale

Six levels of public authority from local to global:

1. 10000 km window/100km grids (Global scale)

2. 1000 km window/10km grids (International (macro) regions)

3. 100 km window/1km grids (National regions)

4. 10 km window/100m grids (Communes and urban districts)

5. 1 km window/10m grids (Urban neighbourhoods)

6. 100 m window/1m grids (Urban blocks and localities)

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Reduce complexity – scope

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In summary – the GEOSTAT Vision

• The goal: sustainable development• Real user needs from government• Spaceship Earth as a man-environmental

system of systems to be described with appropriate scale and scope information

• An information system made of objects and structured according to the ecological method

• A point based foundation for statistics• Concrete projects – GEOSTAT• A network of Excellence – the EFGS

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The GEOSTAT GGIISS and the Post-2015 Agenda

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Everything is connected

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Different monitoring levels

•based on a core set of global indicators

•harmonised to common global standards

•predominantly taken from official data

•applicable to all countries

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The 3 tiers of SDG indicators

??

Targets can be measured now

Targets feasible to measure but requiring investments

Targets not feasible to measure in the medium termOfficial Statistics

enhanced

Data revolution

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The spatial dimension in the SDGs

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From white to green to 10 pointsA European statistical-geospatial

framework

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Source illustration: Hermanni Backer