Data for (Good) Food? Launch of Public Voting on the 10 Questions that could change our Food Systems
BROOKLYN, New York, January 20, 2022 — Last year, the Governance Lab (The GovLab) at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN), and the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) partnered to create the “Food Systems Sustainability” domain of The 100 Questions Initiative, a project seeking to identify pressing action questions that could be addressed with greater access to data and data science.
Today, the Food Systems Sustainability domain launched its top ten questions sourced and curated by our global cohort of food “bilinguals,” who are domain experts with data science expertise. Now we want to hear from you: visit https://food.the100questions.org to vote for your most pressing questions from the top ten list. You may vote for multiple questions.
The food domain is the seventh domain launched under The 100 Questions Initiative, and focuses on addressing the inequality of food distribution and access, paucity of healthy eating education, and unsustainable farming practices.
“In the next 30 years, the global population is expected to grow by 2 billion people, underscoring the urgent need to reimagine our current food production, distribution, and eating habits to preserve our health and environment,” said Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Office of The GovLab. “Identifying key policy questions via the Food Systems Sustainability domain allows us to build demand-driven data collaborative partnerships that can effectively address these environmental and lifestyle challenges.”
Working with food science, security, and climate strategy experts across regions and industries, we first presented a topic map scan of overarching themes in food systems sustainability. These included: food production and processing, food consumption and health patterns, food dependencies and resources, food and human security, and food governance. Using this briefing note as a guide, our bilinguals formulated over 70 questions across a set of conceptual criteria that were assessed for overlap and reformulated by partners. Bilinguals then voted on their priority clustered questions; the top ten of which have been released for public voting.
Marta Antonelli, Head of Research at BCFN, emphasized the potential of the Food Systems Sustainability domain. “One of the most pressing challenges of the next decade is ensuring that all people are fed adequately and nutritiously. Through the 100 Questions Initiative, we’ve been able to promote a space for open science and data-driven policymaking that looks to the future of sustainable food practices.”
The 100 Questions Initiative presents a new approach to data-driven decision-making. Conventional policymaking looks at what datasets are available and formulate policy questions from them. Rather than operate on the supply-driven side, The 100 Questions challenges experts to focus on the demand side to discover what questions need to be answered by citizens. By identifying the most pressing questions that could be answered if appropriate data was made available, stakeholders can work together to design data collaboratives, a new form of public-private partnerships that harness intersectoral data for public good.
The 100 Questions methodology has been successful across fields. For example, the Migration Domain, led alongside the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM), the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), and the European Commission launched the Big Data for Migration Alliance, the first-ever network of stakeholders furthering data collaboration for migration and human mobility policymaking.
By taking part in the Food Systems Sustainability public voting, you can help shape the direction of food-related data collaboratives and #dataforfood. Vote now at food.the100questions.org.
Professionals interested in collaborating are encouraged to send an email to contact@the100questions.org or fill out this form. For more information about the 100 Questions Initiative, visit www.the100questions.org, or contact Stefaan Verhulst, lead of the initiative at sverhulst@thegovlab.org.
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About the 100 Questions Initiative
The 100 Questions Initiative is presented by The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering with initial funding support from Schmidt Futures. It is supported by a global advisory board comprising data science and subject matter experts from the public, corporate, and non-profit sectors. Members include Ciro Cattuto, scientific director of ISI Foundation; Gabriella Gómez-Mont, founder and former director at Laboratorio Para La Ciudad; Molly Jackman, leader of Content-Product Data Science and Engineering at Netflix; Vivienne Ming, founder of Socos Labs; Wilfred Ndifon, director of research at AIMS Global Network; Denice Ross, fellow at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation; and Matthew Salganik, professor of sociology at Princeton University. For more information, visit the100questions.org or https://the100questions.org/faq.
About The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering
The Governance Lab’s mission is to improve people’s lives by changing the way we govern. Our goal at The GovLab is to strengthen the ability of institutions — including but not limited to governments — and people to work more openly, collaboratively, effectively, and legitimately to make better decisions and solve public problems. We believe that increased availability and use of data, new ways to leverage the capacity, intelligence, and expertise of people in the problem-solving process, combined with new advances in technology and science, can transform governance. We approach each challenge and opportunity in an interdisciplinary, collaborative way, irrespective of the problem, sector, geography, and level of government. For more information, visit www.thegovlab.org.
About the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation
The Barilla Foundation analyzes the complexity of current agri-food systems and, through its initiatives aims at disseminating knowledge in order to make informed choices about food and nutrition, towards the achievement of the UN SDGs. It promotes an open dialogue between Science, Politics, Business and Society both nationally and internationally with a multidisciplinary approach including the environmental, economic and social perspective, to secure the wellbeing and health of people and the planet. For more information, visit www.barillacfn.com.
About the Center for European Policy Studies
Founded in Brussels in 1983, CEPS is a leading think tank and forum for debate on EU affairs, ranking among the top think tanks in Europe. With an exceptionally strong in-house research capacity and an extensive network of partner institutes throughout the world, CEPS has amply demonstrated its ability to anticipate trends and to analyze policy questions well before they become topics of general discussion. At CEPS, researchers perform policy research on a wide range of policy areas: from the economy and finance to better regulation, the digital economy and trade, as well as energy and climate, education and innovation, foreign policy, and the European integration process, or justice and home affairs. For more information, visit www.ceps.eu.
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, one of the country’s foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit www.engineering.nyu.edu.
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