Global Urban Data Coalition Meeting

UN-Habitat established the Global Urban Data Coalition with a goal to leverage on the expertise of its wide stakeholder network to advance the production of high resolution, city level data across the prevailing, emerging and future urban data challenges. Launched during the 12th session of the World Urban Forum held in Cairo in November 2024, the Coalition is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder platform that brings together diverse urban data actors, improves coordination, and aligns efforts across the housing and urban data landscape, in support of UN-Habitat’s mandate and strategic focus areas. 

The objectives of the coalition include;

• Connecting key actors across the globe working on key urban and housing data challenges;
• Promoting sustained collaboration and knowledge exchange among key actors to improve global urban and housing data;
• Mapping key global urban and housing data initiatives to leverage knowledge, expertise, and opportunities for scaling;
• Pursuing specific initiatives to advance global urban and housing data.
• Championing urban and housing data ethics and standards, advocating for open, inclusive, and interoperable data frameworks that ensure ease of use across different systems.
• Facilitating policy integration and implementation, translating data-driven insights into practical policy recommendations and evidence-based urban and housing strategies.

Activities on the Coalition are coordinated through a general consultative body which meets biannually to discuss cross cutting ideas and implementation strategies, as well as through thematic technical working groups – which have different meeting schedules. Currently, there are two main technical work areas:

• Working group 1 on Monitoring slums and informal settlements – whose focus is on developing a global definition of informal settlements and harmonized methodology for monitoring slums and informal settlements, including the use of artificial intelligence and earth observation technology.
• Working group 2 on Monitoring urban expansion and vacant urban land – whose focus is on identifying and/or developing a suitable global methodology for measuring the extent and rate of urban expansion and vacant urban land.

The third meeting of the general consultative body will be held in Baku, during the 13th session of the World Urban Forum, to review progress on the ongoing activities.