Driving Positive Change

UN SDGs08 Decent Work And Economic Growth 09 Industry, Innovation And Infrastructure 12 Responsible Consumption And Production
ImpactGlobal
CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Tags#AI #Industry #Sustainability #Technology

AndAnotherDay Joins AIM Global in Shaping the Future of AI in Industry

7th March 2024 – AndAnotherDay has joined AIM Global, the Global Alliance on Artificial Intelligence for Industry and Manufacturing. This strategic collaboration reflects our commitment to advancing safe, sustainable, and inclusive use of AI in industry and manufacturing.

Guided by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), AIM Global promotes the responsible development and deployment of AI and frontier technologies. Aligned with the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda, AIM Global shapes a digital future that is open, secure, and beneficial to all.

AI technologies are transforming industry and manufacturing, offering unprecedented opportunities for increased efficiency, productivity, and sustainability. However, the adoption of these technologies also brings ethical considerations, privacy concerns, and the imperative for inclusivity. As a new member, AndAnotherDay is excited to contribute to AIM Global’s mission of unlocking the full potential of AI for industry.

Founded in 2019, AndAnotherDay builds innovative digital tools for organisations and businesses who align with the UN Sustainability Goals to help them solve complex problems and communicate their message to the wider world.

In recent years, the field of AI for manufacturing has seen significant advancements, with initiatives aimed at improving efficiency, and sustainability. One key initiative is the implementation of predictive maintenance (SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), which utilises machine learning algorithms to anticipate equipment failures, reducing downtime and extending machinery lifespan. Another important development is the optimisation of resource consumption through AI-driven process control (SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production), minimising waste and promoting sustainable practices. Additionally, AI is being leveraged to enhance supply chain management (SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth), enabling better demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, and reduced transportation costs, ultimately contributing to economic growth and job creation. These initiatives demonstrate the potential of AI in driving progress towards the UN SDGs within the manufacturing sector.

“AndAnotherDay is excited to join AIM Global, where forward-thinking partners collaborate to harness the power of AI responsibly,” said Keiron Roberts, Founder. “By being part of this community, we anticipate collaborative opportunities, innovative solutions, and a shared vision for the ethical and effective application of AI to unfold during this exciting journey.”

About AIM Global

AIM Global fosters collaboration for responsible AI in industry and manufacturing. The alliance focuses on research, skills development, ethical guidelines, and policy recommendations to address challenges and opportunities in the evolving AI landscape.

For those interested in learning more about AIM Global, please visit the website at: http://aim.unido.org

What is Biodiversity Loss & Why Does it Matter for Investors?

UN SDGs15 Life On Land
Impact
CategoryUncategorized
Tag

UK to establish world’s first UN-backed centre for circular economy research

UN SDGs17 Partnership For The Goals
ImpactUnited Kingdom
CategoryResearch
Tags#Public Services #Sustainability #UNECE

Repairing The Harm Of Digital Design Using A Trauma-informed Approach

UN SDGs10 Reduced Inequalities
ImpactUnited States of America
CategoryHuman-Centred Design
Tags#Design #Inclusion #Minority Groups

Many Design Choices Have Negatively Impacted Minority Groups

As awareness grows around issues of exclusion and marginalisation in digital spaces, designers have an opportunity and responsibility to repair past harms.

Whether from ignorance or even good intentions, many design choices have negatively impacted minority groups online, often unintentionally recreating dynamics of trauma. By becoming trauma-informed and centring inclusion, designers can help create online experiences that empower rather than marginalise. This involves acknowledging the personal and cultural traumas minorities face, avoiding design decisions that echo exclusionary systems, and proactively building digital spaces that make all groups feel safe, seen and valued. Two practical approaches that can guide designers in this process are 1) collaborating with marginalised communities directly to hear their needs and feedback, and 2) conducting trauma audits on existing sites and apps to uncover issues.

With care, mindfulness and a commitment to equity, digital designers are in a unique position to transform past exclusion into future empowerment.

Download the full paper

Google Bets On Wind To Power Its Data Centres

UN SDGs07 Affordable And Clean Energy 13 Climate Action 17 Partnership For The Goals
ImpactNetherlands
CategoryEnergy And Utilities
Tags#Clean Energy #Data Management #Wind Power

Google announced at the beginning of February (2024) that it has signed agreements to purchase energy from two new offshore wind farms being built off the coast of the Netherlands. The deals reflect Google’s ongoing efforts to power its energy-hungry data centres with renewable sources and reduce its carbon footprint.

The two wind farms, being developed by consortiums led by Royal Dutch Shell and Eneco, will provide a combined 700 megawatts of wind energy capacity. That’s enough to power about 6% of the Netherlands’ annual electricity demand.

For Google, the purchases will allow its two data centres in the Netherlands to operate on approximately 90% clean energy as soon as this year. The company has signed similar renewable energy deals to support data centres in Poland, Italy and Belgium as part of its goal to match every hour of data centre energy use with an hour of clean power by 2030.

However, the growing energy demands of data centres and artificial intelligence technologies threatens to undermine progress on renewables. Electricity consumption at US data centres alone is expected to triple by 2030. This tech-fueled demand is now delaying the retirement of nearly 24 coal plants in the US that were slated to close in the coming years. Once again, Silicon Valley’s breakneck innovation leaves a trail of unintended consequences. Google’s Dutch wind gambit is a step toward a sustainable future, but the industry still has a long way to go.

Investing In A Sustainable Future: Stories Of Impact From Around The Globe

UN SDGs17 Partnership For The Goals
ImpactGlobal
CategorySustainable Development
Tags#EIP #ESG

The path to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 requires collaboration and investment across sectors and borders. In a recent call for “SDG Good Practices,” over 700 submissions were received highlighting impactful initiatives supporting the SDGs.

One compelling example is the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE), launched in 2013 following the Rio+20 Summit. This partnership brings together five UN agencies to provide integrated support for building inclusive green economy transitions. By putting sustainability at the heart of policymaking, PAGE assists countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond to advance sustainable development and meet SDG targets related to decent work, economic growth, industry and innovation, reduced inequalities, climate action and more.

To date, PAGE has helped develop over 80 national policies and plans and trained over 15,000 individuals across partner countries. Looking ahead, PAGE aims to scale up its reach and impact, supporting 30 countries in green economy transitions by 2030.

The EU External Investment Plan (EIP) also demonstrates the power of investment partnerships, in this case attracting private finance along with EU funding to promote sustainable development beyond Europe’s borders. The EIP and its associated European Fund for Sustainable Development focus especially on creating jobs, supporting SMEs, and driving progress on healthcare, energy access, infrastructure and more within EU neighbouring regions and Africa. Even amidst the challenges of COVID-19, the initiative has brought in around 50 billion EUR in total investment so far.

These examples illustrate the importance of collaboration and smart investment to drive progress on the SDGs around the world. The collection of over 460 vetted practices provides a wealth of insights and inspiration for multiplying impact.

Read our article on LinkedIn

 

 

Call For Organisations And Groups To Be Sustainable Development Goal Champions

UN SDGs13 Climate Action
ImpactIreland
CategorySustainable Development
Tag#Champions

Unlocking nature positive private investment

UN SDGs13 Climate Action 14 Life Below Water 15 Life On Land
ImpactUnited Kingdom
CategoryFinance
Tags#Competition #Funding #Innovation

Excel Is Not Valid As A Reporting Tool For CSRD Compliance

UN SDGs12 Responsible Consumption And Production 16 Peace, Justice And Strong Institutions 17 Partnership For The Goals
ImpactEurope
CategoryGlobal Compliance And Reporting
Tags#CSRD #Data Management #ESG #Sustainability

A New Era In Sustainability Reporting

For years, sustainability teams have relied on Excel to collect, analyse, and report environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. However, emerging regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) bring an unprecedented volume, complexity and scrutiny of sustainability information – rendering old methods like spreadsheets obsolete.

This shift prompts many questions around data management, reporting standards and choosing the right tools. This article breaks down the key challenges spreadsheets face under CSRD, and why more sophisticated sustainability software is now essential.

Mandated Digital Reporting Formats

A core requirement is for sustainability reports to adhere to the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF). This leverages XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), an open XML-based standard, for tagging report data to enable automated analysis and comparable benchmarking.

XBRL provides unique identifiers and labels as metadata that renders sustainability data ‘intelligent’ and interconnected. However, defining and implementing these custom XBRL taxonomies aligned to reporting standards requires significant technical resources.

Dealing With Expanding Data Requirements

In addition to new formatting standards, CSRD also massively expands the scope of sustainability reporting across environmental, societal and governance dimensions. Hundreds of new datapoints introduce complexity regarding data sourcing, validation and stewardship.

Spreadsheets are error-prone when handling such volumes of interconnected metrics across departments and global sites. Data governance and quality assurance is crucial when external assurance over public disclosures is mandated.

Process Automation Is Key

With XBRL and expanded data requirements, manual approaches like spreadsheets become highly inefficient. Purpose-built sustainability management platforms provide automation for data collection, centralised structured storage, validation workflows and pre-configured reporting outputs.

Advanced solutions also enable auditability over data changes, version control capabilities, role-based permissions and business intelligence integrations for identifying insights across highly normalised data. Custom dashboards empower transparency both internally and to external stakeholders.

In summary, prescriptive new EU regulations require sustainability teams to rapidly adopt more advanced technical capabilities focused on structured and transparent data management. While spreadsheets were once sufficient, leading technology now offers transformative opportunities to oversee ESG performance and build stakeholder trust.

Assessing UNDP’s Global Efforts To Digitalise Public Services: Key Insights And Future Outlook

UN SDGs08 Decent Work And Economic Growth
ImpactGlobal
CategorySustainable Development
Tags#Public Services #UNDP

Open-Source AI For Environmental Justice

UN SDGs13 Climate Action
ImpactGlobal
CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Tags#Environment #Justice

Scaling Climate Action By Unleashing The Power Of Technology In Sustainable Finance

UN SDGs13 Climate Action
ImpactGlobal
CategoryFinance
Tags#Scaling #Technology

Icebergs Are melting – AI Knows Where And How Fast

UN SDGs13 Climate Action
ImpactUnited Kingdom
CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Tags#AI #icebergs #Satellites

AI Has Been Trained To Measure Changes In Icebergs

AI has been trained to measure changes in icebergs 10,000 times faster than a human could do it.

This will help scientists understand how much meltwater icebergs release into the ocean – a process accelerating as climate change warms the atmosphere.

Scientists at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom say their AI can map large Antarctic icebergs in satellite images in just one-hundredth of a second, reports the European Space Agency.

For humans, this task is lengthy and time-consuming, and it’s hard to identify icebergs amid the white of clouds and sea ice.

Accurately Tracking Icebergs Is Crucial

In a major breakthrough, researchers from the University of Leeds have developed a neural network that can quickly and precisely map the extent of large Antarctic icebergs in satellite images. This new artificial intelligence approach can accomplish the task in just 0.01 seconds, vastly faster than the tedious manual analysis previously required.

Lead author Anne Braakmann-Folgmann, who conducted the research during her PhD studies at Leeds, explained that accurately tracking icebergs is crucial since they impact ocean physics, chemistry, and biology. “It is vital to locate icebergs and monitor their extent to quantify their meltwater contribution to the oceans,” she said.

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellite plays a key role by providing images regardless of cloud cover and darkness. While icebergs, sea ice, and clouds appear indistinguishable in camera images, in radar images icebergs stand out brightly against the darker background. However, even in radar images, differentiation can be challenging when backgrounds are complex.

The neural network’s strength lies in its ability to grasp subtle relationships and contextual information across entire images. It reliably identifies even smaller iceberg fragments and excels at pinpointing the largest iceberg, which is essential for continuous monitoring.

The system was trained on manually-outlined Sentinel-1 images showing icebergs in diverse conditions. By continually adjusting its parameters during training, it learned to replicate the human-derived outlines with over 99% accuracy. Testing on icebergs spanning 54 to 1052 square kilometers demonstrated impressive real-world performance.

According to Dr. Braakmann-Folgmann, this automation enables easier observation of iceberg area changes. ESA’s Mark Drinkwater added that the machine learning approach provides an accurate and robust method to monitor this vulnerable region.

‘Shovel ready’: National Grid helps 20GW of clean energy projects jump connections queue

UN SDGs07 Affordable And Clean Energy
ImpactUnited Kingdom
CategoryEnergy And Utilities
Tag

The Promise and Peril of Generative AI

UN SDGs07 Affordable And Clean Energy 08 Decent Work And Economic Growth 09 Industry, Innovation And Infrastructure
ImpactGlobal
CategoryArtificial Intelligence
Tag

Hitachi

Smart Islands Energy Project

Empowering the Isles of Scilly community to better utilise renewable energy within the network.

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