In the latest release of the Working Paper series by BC3, the ARIES team, consisting of Ferdinando Villa, Stefano Balbi, and Alessio Bulckaen, in collaboration with Ken Bagstad from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), has unveiled an updated interoperability strategy for the upcoming generation of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). This strategic initiative seeks to propel the vision of the semantic web forward and elevate open science to unprecedented levels.
SEEA, instituted by the UN Statistical Commission in 2012, establishes international environmental-economic standards mandating the integration of diverse data streams, including challenging geospatial and other sources. However, National Statistical Offices (NSOs) have encountered challenges in implementing these standards. Despite the development of various ecosystem service modeling platforms over the past 15 years, a lack of coordination has led to duplicated efforts, reliance on siloed data, and inefficient reuse of knowledge from previous modeling endeavors.
Ensuring interoperability among the data and models underpinning SEEA is pivotal for advancing sustainability science and practice. This fosters the swift integration and sharing of new scientific data and models, delivering benefits to NSOs and the broader scientific community. The ARIES Network, which powers the ARIES for SEEA Explorer, presents a clear path toward achieving interoperability, offering advantages to NSOs, scientific communities, and policymakers.
The original “Interoperability Strategy” is available at https://seea.un.org/content/aries-for-seea and is the outcome of collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), and BC3. This collaboration has led to the establishment of the UN ARIES for SEEA Sector Hub on the UN Global Platform.
We invite partner organizations interested in participating as nodes in a semantic knowledge network focused on utilizing interoperable and reusable science for critical national and global sustainability initiatives. Contact us to learn more and join us on this journey!
