CGI and Google Cloud join forces to support United Nations in climate change fight

IT consultancy pools resources with public cloud giant to support United Nations agency helping members fight climate change

Caroline Donnelly,
Senior Editor, UK

Published: 30 Nov 2023 12:45

IT consultancy CGI is collaborating with Google Cloud to co-develop a platform for the United Nations that will help countries tackle a range of climate change-related sustainability challenges.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), which is the UN agency concerned with sustainably supporting countries through economic and industrial development issues, said the data-driven Sustainability Planet Platform will help countries tackle problems such as rising temperatures, flooding and air pollution.

“The Sustainability Planet Platform will enable UNIDO member states and other stakeholders to see UNIDO’s projects and partnerships, as well as industrial development statistics data through a new lens,” said UNIDO, in a statement.

The platform will draw on historical geospatial and sociological data sets that both CGI and Google Cloud hold and combine it with forecast data generated using artificial intelligence (AI) to help countries predict the impact of climate change.

It will also pull in temperature and satellite data from information sources such as Landsat and the UNIDO’s own global project data, and countries will be able to use the platform to track progress with achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Ciyong Zou, deputy to the director general and the managing director of the directorate of technical cooperation and sustainable industrial development of UNIDO, said the platform’s launch is a “huge milestone for our member states” as they seek to address the complex problem of climate change.

“The platform will act as a single source of up-to-date and comprehensive sustainability data, showing the current efforts that UNIDO is making, where they are taking place, and what their impact is,” said Zou. “What Google Cloud and CGI are helping us to deliver is an accessible platform that simplifies complex data, allowing users to see patterns in the data to date and predict future trends, ultimately helping to direct further sustainability.”

Teddra Burgess, director of civilian sales at Google Cloud Public Sector, said the collaboration will pave the way for all of UNIDO’s sustainability efforts and interventions to be tracked across every territory.

“We look forward to working with CGI to continue to deliver sustainability outputs using cutting-edge technology and comprehensive planet data to enable further achievements towards the global sustainability development goals,” she said.

Tara McGeehan, president of CGI in the UK and Australia, said the company will work with UNIDO to identify and develop innovations that could lead to the development of proof-of-concepts that will benefit member states, businesses and individuals, too.

“At CGI, we apply the latest innovations in technology to address a range of sustainability challenges, and we are pleased to be working alongside UNIDO to help them provide concrete and practical solutions to pressing global challenges,” she added.

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