Throughout history, water has been the quiet engine behind progress: farmers irrigate fields to grow crops; industry needs it to produce goods and generate energy; and people, communities and cities draw on it for drinking, sanitation, and public health. Technology also made it possible to reach deeper aquifers and more distant rivers, expanding water use and exposing fundamental tensions in how water is valued and distributed, and who bears the costs.
Continue readingCombinatorial innovation is driving innovation in satellite-based economic 
measurements at unprecedented resolution, frequency and scale. Increasing availability of satellite data and rapid advancements in machine learning methods are enabling a better understanding into the fundamental forces shaping economic development.
The desire of human beings to “think spatially” to understand how people and objects are organized in space has not changed much since Eratosthenes — the Greek astronomer best known as the “father of Geography” — first used the term “Geographika” around 250 BC. Centuries later, our understanding of economic geography is being propelled forward by new data and new capabilities to rapidly process, analyze and convert these vast data flows into meaningful and near real-time information
Netherlands for the World Bank 