We are thrilled to announce that The Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF has won DataIQ 2022 Data for Society Award for its innovative approach to leveraging data to tackle some of the world's most pressing issues, with a focus on children. The Collaborative, which is a partnership between the Scottish Government, the University of Edinburgh, and UNICEF, has been recognized for their approach to delivering Children's Climate Risk Index project.  

The Children's Climate Risk Index is a groundbreaking project that aims to understand and measure the likelihood of climate and environmental shocks and stresses leading to the erosion of development progress and the deepening of deprivation and humanitarian situations affecting children and vulnerable households and groups. Leveraging the expertise of a multi-disciplinary team with partners from UNICEF, the University of Stirling, the University of Southampton, and Edinburgh University, the project team brought together the right data, skills, and expertise to build out the Index. The significance of this tool was captured by global climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has described it as the first comprehensive view of children's exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. 

The Index incorporates more child-specific dimensions of vulnerability, including child health, education, nutrition, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), social protection, and child engagement in decision-making about their futures as endorsed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The outputs of this Index have been used extensively during COP26 as a powerful tool to advocate for climate action and the inclusion of children's voices in these conversations. 

The Collaborative's Impact Collaboration process played a crucial role in managing the delivery of the project, as well as ensuring that the work was carried out safely and ethically via the tools in their Responsible Innovation framework. By reaching out to their community, the team was able to pull together experts across geosciences, social sciences, data science, and policymaking to successfully deliver a multidimensional index based on equally weighted, global, widely available data sets covering both climate hazards and child vulnerabilities to those hazards. 

The work of The Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF is a catalyst for collaborative data-driven solutions to advance child rights everywhere, encouraging the exchange of data and expertise for social good. The Children's Climate Risk Index is a testament to the power of collaboration and the importance of putting the right pieces in place to achieve impactful solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. 

 You can find out more about the project and the outputs below.