About

Global Pulse is an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, harnessing today's new world of digital data and real-time analytics to gain a better understanding of changes in human well-being. Global Pulse hopes to contribute a future in which access to better information sooner makes it possible to keep international development on track, protect the world's most vulnerable populations, and strengthen resilience to global shocks.  

Global Pulse functions as an innovation laboratory, bringing together expertise from UN agencies, governments, academia, and the private sector to research, develop, test and share tools and approaches for harnessing real-time data for more effective and efficient policy action.

Strategy

Our implementation strategy takes a systems-based approach, with three interdependent areas of activity:

1. Data Research.  Global Pulse is discovering new indicators in digital data with the potential to give us a real-time understanding of community well being and real-time feedback on whether our policies and programmes are working.
2. Technology Toolkit:  Global Pulse is assembling a toolkit of free and open source software tools that will allow development experts to mine real-time data for digital signals, share hypotheses with trusted colleagues, and make evidence-based decisions. 
3. Pulse Lab Network: Global Pulse is partnering with Member States to establish an integrated network of country-level innovation centers, or Pulse Labs, that will bring together government experts, UN agencies, academia and the private sector to pioneer new applications of real-time data to development challenges.

Background

The recent waves of global shocks – food, fuel, and financial – have revealed a wide gap between the onset of a global crisis and the availability of actionable information for decision makers to protect the world's most vulnerable populations. Traditional statistics have been effective in tracking medium- to longer- term development trends, but – given the latency of the data generated – are ineffective in generating the type of real-time information decision makers need in developing timely actions to help vulnerable populations cope with crises. Much of the data used to track progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for example, dates back to 2008 or earlier – before the onset of the current economic crisis.

While this might feed the perception that there is a scarcity of information about the wellbeing of populations, today there is actually an ocean of data that did not exist even a few years ago. Wherever people are using mobile phones or accessing digital services, they are leaving trails behind in the data. Data gathered from cell phones, online behavior, and Twitter, for example, provides information that is updated daily, hourly and by the minute. With the global explosion of mobile phone-based services, communities all around the world are generating this real-time data in ever-increasing volumes. These digital trails are more immediate and can give a fuller picture of the changes, stressors, and shifts in the daily living of a community, especially when compared with traditional indicators such as annual averages of wages, or food and gas prices. This is especially crucial during times of global shocks, when the resilience of families and their hard-won development gains are tested.

Global Pulse was created by the UN Secretary-General in 2009 to explore opportunities for using real-time data to gain a more accurate understanding of population wellbeing, especially related to the impacts of global crises. The availability of real-time data holds tremendous promise for helping us detect the early signs of stress on vulnerable populations. It represents an unprecedented opportunity to track the human impacts of crises as they unfold, and to get real-time feedback on how well our policy responses are working.

Project Goals

Global Pulse will contribute to the international community's goals to:

1. Provide additional opportunities for gauging population well-being. Global Pulse data research efforts will help to identify new, promising sources of real-time information for monitoring population well being, and develop guidelines about what new data sources to monitor, what patterns to look for, how to validate them and what they mean. The results will bring us closer to a real-time understanding of how communities are building resiliency and withstanding crises.
2. Better protect countries against development reversals: In an age of increasing global volatility, hard-won development gains are in danger of being eroded much faster than in the past.  Real-time actionable information will allow the international community to better integrate vulnerability and resilience considerations into their development policy and planning, and to understand the impacts of a crisis on vulnerable populations early on when there is still time to prevent irreversible harm.
3. More effectively target development resources: In a climate of increasing fiscal austerity, decision makers at every level face pressures on limited resources. Global Pulse will assist decision makers to plan and target interventions in times of crisis to ensure that those populations most at risk are protected from long-term harm.