I was invited by the CIB to present on ”Leveraging Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for the Sustainable Development Goals”. In my presentation, I covered how ICT can support transformative change and increase the rate of progress in achieving the SDGs. This included addressing the following areas:

• Why has progress in achieving the SDGs been slow? What can be done to speed this up? This includes understanding how ICT can play a role in increased awareness and knowledge, advocacy, policy development, and changing behavior.
• What are the most promising tools for change? How can these be identified, piloted and scaled up? This includes showing how ICT can be help identify, test and implement economic, organizational and technological innovation and interventions such as 15-minute cities, the circular economy and sufficiency, to drive change.
• Once effective systems have been identified for achieving the SDGS, how can these be scaled up and maintained? This includes showing how ICT can be used to support the integration of sustainability into city planning and management through science-based sustainability targets and evidence-based planning and implementation processes.

The presentation drew on examples of recent projects including citizen science projects that log environmental conditions in cities and buildings, a guide on advocacy of sustainable buildings and construction, city-scale modeling of circular economy interventions and a project integrating sustainability into city planning and management. Image: City Access Map.