 Would you like me to make the first introduction? No, no, of course not. This is my home, I'm obliged to welcome everyone to my house. Colleagues, good morning. For me, it's a great pleasure that we are meeting today, be it online, to start talking about data issues. We are partnering with the metabolism of species and it will change the sense of power and access to data. Sorry, I'm not hearing from you. Labo, your connectivity is very bad. My connectivity. Yeah, you're breaking. Is that so? Okay, this is better now. Yes, it's better now. It's clear. I'm sorry for that. So I was saying, I'm going to take this liberty to do an introduction in high level why we are meeting. Kim was well into the details of how this metabolism of cities and data portal is working and who is, who are the participants, why the interest in bringing this as a focus for the city. And with that, I want to introduce myself, but for the sake of time, I will actually request colleagues to rather use the chat box to put in their details and your name, your surname, your organization that you represent. And a cell phone number is always very handy if you can get hold of somebody on the email. So I am Labo Molete. I'm working under the Department of Environment and Infrastructure Services. I'm heading a directorate that is responsible for air quality and climate change and energy. And we have had issues with data. We've done emissions inventories for both air quality and climate change and data has always been an issue. And hence, we thought that it makes sense to forge, you know, relations with the metabolism of cities community. And with that, without wasting too much time, I want to also request Mosa or Nobandu to record the session and also to indicate to the participants that by virtue of participating here, we take it that we have your consent in recording the session. And that we are going to use some rules of engagement in terms of wanting to engage. You have the option of raising your hand. You can put your ideas on the chat box. And we are requesting everyone all the videos to be off. Tim, I see yours is on. I think only when you're speaking can you then, you know, switch on your video, which I haven't done. But basically, all the videos can be off. All the microphones must be off just so that we have a better, you know, transmission of the session. Thank you. I think I want to hand over to you now. You know, if you can just do a overview without going through the entire presentation, just a quick overview of the focus on environmental sustainability. And the intention of doing this presentation is really for the participants to start and appreciate our data gaps and why we are doing this session because there's so many avenues in the sustainability sector that are hinging on data availability and the flow of data generally. Thanks. Over to you, Luna. Good morning, colleagues. Yes, as LeBou indicated, my name is Lunel Sehrobatsi. For those of us that haven't met me yet, we've recently done with support from IKLI, the city's first environmental sustainability strategy. And I'll take you through just what is a brief overview as LeBou indicated. Can you see the screen? Yes, ma'am. Okay, just one second. If you can just put it in a presentation format, Luna. Okay, so yes, this is the first one. The content, yeah, just the purpose. Why did we do that? What is the vision that we want to achieve? Obviously, as any strategy comes with challenges, what are the key issues out of those challenges? And then the action plan, which was very important for the job to do. So this was a partnership opportunity with City's Network in IKLI to do this project with us. Sorry for the interjection. The slides are not moving. Oh, gosh. Sorry. Let's see. Can you see the slides like this? Yes. Can you just put it on full presentation for it, the full slide? Yes, I did. So it doesn't move. So I'll try again. If it doesn't move, then I'll do it in this format. So I'm just trying again quickly. Do you see the slide now? Yes. Okay. So if it doesn't move, let me know and then I'll exit and just do it in a normal layout. Apologies for the technology fail. But yes, the need for environmental strategy is to, that yes, we want to actually institutionalize the sustainability strategy as a primary and also collective responsibility, because this is one of those transversal functions that cut across all mandates of the city. And how we take it forward as a city towards sustainable and resilient future. The need for the environmental strategy, I think there was a whole lot of different views in terms of what we mean by environmental strategy across the city inside and also externally. So we wanted to create a common understanding, looking at what are the global trends, what is our national and local implications for environmental sustainability strategy. Out of the strategy, there was various environmental sustainability issues that was identified. We might use of the DPSIR methodology to set then a strategic response. What was also important for us was to look at action plan of how do we achieve this. And I'll get to this because a lot of the issues that came out of the action plan is also actually in terms of data requirements that we need. So this is just a high level to say the strategic agenda for the department. Where do we take our cue from? Out of the NDP outcomes, there were two that relate to environmental sustainability. I'm sorry again. Okay, so we're going to do this. Apologies, colleague. I'll also load it in the chat box so that you can see. So yes, so it also then take cue the environmental strategy from the NDP outcomes, the GDS 2040 outcomes, and also mayoral priorities. There are 11 priorities and number nine is one of these mayoral priorities that talks to environmental sustainability. So what are the challenges concerning environmental sustainability? As I indicated, there were nine issues that came out of the strategy. It's relating to increase in greenhouse gas emissions, energy insecurity because of a high reliance on electricity still, limited water supply, mainly because of aging infrastructure, also increase in water demand. And water pollution often resulting as a result from sewer spills, our poor air quality because we still very much depending on private vehicles, dependency on fossil fuel and also emissions from industry. Other challenges was the competing demand for land. That is, there are many sort of competing issues for land availability, loss of ecosystems, goods and services that then as implications for climate change, habitat loss, etc. An increase of waste generation and disposal. There's a slow uptake of separation of source as intervention. We're also sitting with diminishing landfill space, inadequate service delivery and of course a growing population. Poor water quality as a result of illegal discharge from industry, lack of services in informal settlements, particularly waste pollution, and then also lack of bylaw enforcement that result in this poor water quality. So what do we want to achieve? The purpose is to provide guidance across all the cities operations in terms of how do we become a resilient, loveable and sustainable city. The vision that we have in the strategy is environmental sustainability and resilient city for people of Johannesburg. And the mission is then to secure remote and arms and protect natural systems to build a resilient city. The evolution of the strategy didn't just happen during last year when we finalized this present strategy, but since 2005 there was the first environmental management policy in the city. This resulted in a number of other sector specific policies that talks to environmental sustainability. For example, catchment management plan, there's a water and conservation demand management strategy in 2010-11. We also now, there's an energy plan that was done in 2015. So you can see that there has been a whole range of various environmental sector related plans that has been developed. And this is then a culmination of what we have done then to put together environmental sustainability strategy. So just to locate the strategy within the bigger broader plans of the city, we have the GDS, we have the IDP, we have the spatial development framework, but all of that is sort of informed by city sectoral policies, whether it's the ITP, the transport plan or the economic growth strategy. The environmental sustainability strategy sits here at the lower level. It should be arrows that goes up and down as we inform then the IDP, the GDS, the SDF and as well the SDBIP of the city. The principles underlining the strategy, obviously the environmental sustainability strategy is a long-term perspective. We're also looking at social well-being and economic prosperity, thresholds that we need to understand what are the thresholds of acceptable change. And as I started off to say that sustainability cuts across boundaries, it's transversal in nature and that there's a collective responsibility with stakeholders, not just with in the city, but also with creating partnerships to achieve this environmental sustainability city. As indicated the methodology that we follow, I think I talked to converted colleagues here that understand the DPSIR model, driver pressure, state, the impact and the response, which I won't go into all of these details, but yeah, this is just to outline one example, pretty that the whole presentation doesn't work, but yeah, to just indicate how the DPSIR model works. That was just the stakeholder engagement. Okay, I'm almost done. What I want to do now is to just indicate what are the environmental sustainability issues. And then out of these issues I sort of highlight what are the data sort of requirements so that we can start measuring environmental sustainability. So it's around urbanization that places increased pressure on infrastructure and services in the city. It's around greenhouse gas emissions, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, waste management, because of its significance to pollution, whether it's on land, air and also the water systems. Open space value, because yeah, the value of the natural areas not always generate, are not always adequately valued and what the contributions and benefit they can bring. Water quality, it often across the city, the two catchments that we have, Klipper River and the Yakskay, it exceeds the legal and ecological thresholds of these two catchments. Water scarcity, the demand is likely to exceed if we're not managing our demand carefully. Biodiversity, the uniqueness of our biodiversity are inadequately protected and managed. And that's also as a result of a lot of land competition that we have is also poorly managed. Air quality from resources both internal and also external from the city's own geographical area. And the last one that we thought was sort of pulling everything together is like accountability that we both need within the city, city operations and that's responsible for service delivery that we need to understand our responsibility and our role in taking care for the environment. So we can't just expect that external citizens is actually doing that, but it starts with the city itself with its operations. Then I thought in terms of just sort of, we want to start to measure this environmental sustainability on an annual basis to just pull together data to give a sort of a trend and a dashboard of how are we doing. On our first issue, which is around urbanization, there we're looking at like what is the number of sustainable development applications that we approve and sustainable development applications is around how did we affect or give effect to our environmental policies. If you saw the earlier slide in terms of all the environmental sector specific policies and plans that we have, that is giving guidance then to development in the city. So how do we use those policies to improve on sustainability in the city? Looking then at our infrastructure, whether we both resilient infrastructure and therefore we will see a decrease in failing infrastructure. The greenhouse gas emissions, this is under refinement as we also as the department concluding on the climate action plan. So there will be further data requirements out of that plan. But what we essentially looking is emission reductions from CO2 and also reduction in climate risk zone. Waste management, we want to continue to divert waste away from landfill. We are currently sitting with 15% of waste diverted away from landfill in the last financial year. Partnership opportunities that we create around enabling recycling in the city and also a number of prosecutions because of enforcing the waste by law. In terms of open space management, this is around what are our functional ecological areas that are secured. How can we then further also create green jobs in the sector? Water quality is aquatic ecosystems that are maintained. Also a number of reported spillages that we reduce and that reported spillages is often as a result of your sewer spillages. Water scarcity, we want to see a reduction in the non-revenue water. Reduction in rain water input if we want to manage our demand. As well as the annual reduction in consumption water. Then the last four is around percent water scarcity. Yes, that I dealt with. The biodiversity then the two areas is like what are the percentage of biodiversity priority areas. Once we've identified that, what are we then protecting out of those biodiversity priorities? So those are all data that we require. On air quality management is the number of days that we exceed the PM 2.5 levels in the city based on the national guidelines. Also whether our air quality monitoring stations are actually monitoring adequate data on an annual basis. And that we also issue then and monitor our atmospheric emission license and the conditions attached to that. On the sort of general environmental awareness is around interventions that we have with other departments within the city, but also partnerships that we create outside the city. Similarly to this particular session that we have on now. And then lastly is around environmental campaigns to see how do we change behavior amongst ourselves in the city. So this is my final slide to just say that environmental sustainability is a multidisciplinary. It's cutting across various functions in the city. We have this action plan where we want to start to collect the data that sort of keep an indication of a quick dashboard and understand what are the issues. There is a need for the annual monitoring and trend analysis. We'll start to do this trend annual trend analysis as of January next year. And then also we're using this strategy to inform business plans in the city, not just for EISD as the custodian of the strategy, but also our service delivery entities that they can prioritize in budgeting for this. And that's the end of this presentation. As I indicated, there is a lot of other information supporting the strategy, which are the additional slides. But this is then the end given I was requested to just do a short overview. But I'll load the full presentation in the chat box. And apologies for the breakdown in technology. Thank you, Labu. Over to you. Thank you, Lunel. We are not going to do questions because this presentation was intended just to set the scene around the data requirements at least from the city side. I'm going to hand over to Kim at this point. Thanks, Labu. And thanks, Lunel, for such a great footing in the context and what City of Johannesburg is doing in terms of environmental sustainability. So I just want to introduce myself quickly. My name is Kamen Three-Fan Lee. I am with Metabolism of Cities. I've been working with the incredible community of Metabolism of Cities for the last couple of months, supporting them in this amazing expansion into urban metabolism data collection that has evolved radically in the last couple of months. So I just want to introduce this session as a session on data in cities. And this is a continuation of a seminar series that was done last year, which focused on policy and practice in urban metabolism research and is funded by the Urban Studies Foundation. So it's really because of them that we are able to have these sessions and continue the stream of work. Just a quick overview of Metabolism of Cities. We are a complete nonprofit organization that is focused on expanding urban metabolism research and make creating more awareness and education to understand urban metabolism as a research field and as a practical field of application for policymakers and researchers. So let me just unpack what urban metabolism is. Urban metabolism is basically all of the processes and resources that go into a city, what happens in the city with those resources, and what happens when those resources move out of the city. So that can be all-encompassing water, energy, food, agriculture, up to what you buy to shop where the packaging goes, where wastewater goes, how much is produced within the city, how much is produced externally and brought in, how much waste is exported, how much emissions are created from those. So it's really as if you were looking at the city like a cell and all of the processes that happen within that boundary and all of the things that get imported and exported out of that cell, which is the city. So today we are continuing this process of linking urban metabolism research with policymakers such as yourselves, and we also have some great researchers in the room, and also the people that have been collecting data for the last couple of months. So I'm just going to take a step back and talk about metabolism of cities in terms of what resources have been produced under this organization. So we are a completely contributor volunteer-led organization, so we rely on incredibly smart and passionate people to create resources that help to achieve our goals, which is creating awareness, creating learning activities and resources and putting those learnings into practice. So for the last three months we've been revamping an online platform that collects all the data that you would need to do material flow analysis and analyze the urban metabolism of the city. And this has come about after years of research and years of refining, what exactly is needed, what the requirements of each of those data sets are, and how this is further refined and analyzed and being made available to people. So one key thing about metabolism of cities is that we are very passionate about open access and open source, which means that everything that is put onto our platform is freely available and is open to collaboration. So the source code is all available and you can contribute to that. And a little bit later on we'll go through the actual platform. So joining us today is Guapello Madoncella, who has been a dedicated data harvester for the last two months for the city of Johannesburg. Now our data harvester is basically somebody that goes and finds this long list of information and long list of data that's required to make this kind of analysis. Guapello, thank you very much for joining us. So she's going to share her experiences from collecting data and what is publicly available. And this might shine some light on data availability and how important that is in the public realm. We also have Graham Gatz joining us, who is the director of research at the GTRO. As a key researcher in this field and in Johannesburg, it's really great to have you, Graham, so thank you for joining us. And he will also be giving us some of his background in terms of his experiences getting data to do this kind of research and how he's gone about that over the last couple of years. And then from COJ's side, we have Musa Mahlaji, who I met a year ago almost to the day, doing some work for vehicle emissions and trying to find that information within the city and trying to find data. And he is also going to speak from environmental department side, and of course, Lebel, who's already introduced himself, and I think you all know, will also be joining us in this discussion. So what's going to happen is that we are going to start, we're going to have a discussion about data availability for the next 20 minutes or so, and then we'll open it up to questions from the audience. And it also would be great if you have any questions during that you'd like to ask anyone of the panelists or to just put that in the chat or, and then at the end we'll do a raise your hand and we can go through those questions. All right. So I don't know if my speakers want to just show their faces. It would be really nice. I don't know if that'll cause any bandwidth problems. But I just wanted to start actually with, hi Graham, nice to see you. Hi Musa. I actually just wanted to start with white pillow and ask you, you know, that there's something really special about going through a long list of data data requirements for a specific city. How did you find the whole experience in terms of finding data about Johannesburg, because Johannesburg is the biggest city in South Africa and it is also municipality that's nested within other very busy municipalities how did you find that experience? Good morning everyone. Firstly, I just want to say I can't show my face because my camera is is messed up. So you'll see my face, but you'll see a million different colors. So I'd rather not. And yeah, so I've been working with metabolism of cities for the past two months, as Ken said, collecting data for the city of Johannesburg. And yeah, just to speak a little bit about my experience. So of course, you know, it's interesting trying to find data for a city like Johannesburg. And I mean, it's interesting in the sense that, you know, you also have to be very careful because if you just search Johannesburg, then you might just get data on on the CBD. And also just remembering that we're looking at the city of Johannesburg as a whole, which is actually a metropolitan municipality. And going into it, I thought, ah, this should be this should be fine, you know, because obviously Johannesburg is is a metro and, you know, I thought there should be a lot of data, you know, available. But that wasn't the case. In most cases, I definitely struggled to find to find data. And in cases where I did find data, or in cases where, you know, I found links to data, you know, sometimes the links broken, you can't actually, you know, find the data that you're looking for. Otherwise, a lot of, you know, data is either what's what's this called, it's not it's not recent, it's not it's a bit old. So I was always faced with, you know, like the question of a K, do I do I keep this uploaded because it's all data? Or do I try to find something more, more recent than even in trying to find something more recent? Sometimes it's a bit difficult. So then I've always just go with whatever I found, even though it was old, and also just, you know, make a note of the fact that this is all I found. And despite it not being being recent. And yeah, I think I think for me, what I really struggled with is it almost felt like the data was was all over the place. I think when you're looking for data, of course, when you start, you look everywhere, but then, you know, eventually you start picking up patterns of where a lot of the data for the city could be housed potentially. But yeah, I didn't, I didn't pick up on those patterns at all. And I think which, yeah. Okay, that's a fantastic overview. And, you know, I'm just thinking about what Linnell said, and all of those different, those different components in that plan in terms of, you know, ensuring sustainability and how important data and tracking that tracking those markers is so important. So like urbanization and greenhouse gases are like some, some huge ones that can be very, very easily quantified with data. But the accessibility of that data is quite difficult. So I don't know, Graham, have you ever had any, any issues with data accessibility and like the quality of data and the reliability of that, especially when it comes to things like waste and water and things like that. You are in mute. Can you hear me now? Yes. I mean, I think we can pretty much confirm everything that Port Paolo has said. So the two rows work on sustainability issues started pretty much with the inauguration of the G zero, which was sort of late 2008 beginning of 2009. And we've gone through various processes over the last 10 11 years of trying to give some perspectives on sustainability issues, of course, not simply with regard to the city of Joe book. But across all the cities in the heart and city region. And my observations refer not to COJ, but also has had any and some of the binary. And we've tried for various purposes to collect data. We did a big metabolic flows analysis and data collection exercise in 2013. Starting around 2013, we inaugurated a long running project on green infrastructure and we tried to collect data on things like wetlands on a number of trees and so on across the city region as part of that. And we've we've done a couple of different states of the hearting city region report style things where we've had chapters on the environment. And then also colleagues who with us today from the G through Julian and Christina and have worked in a number of different ways, either with the city or with the provincial government on things like environmental management frameworks and so on and so forth. And in every one of those processes we've really struggled with data. And so a couple of observations if I if I can, based on on those experiences. And it's very clear to us that data collection tends to be episodic. So in other words, what basically happens is that the city or the province at some point in other says we have to have an in a new environmental management framework. They hand the job over to environmental consultants, typically there's some kind of steering committee or something like that. And then the environmental management consultants planning consultants then start to do data collection. And they start scrounging the way in the same way as Bopello has for any data that they can find in the public domain. And that just isn't the data available except what you would find publicly on the web in the form of reports that Bopello has says come across. So everyone refers back for example to the 2009 greenhouse gas emissions report, which of course then references earlier data collection processes. And there's no systematic process anyway of collecting that information that we know of anyway. So data collection tends to be very episodic. The other thing that we've discovered is that even where data collection is more systematic. When you look at the data it leaves as many questions as it answers. And I'm going to share with you the cutting waste information system where by law each of the municipalities must report monthly into this waste information system. And when you look closely at the data it just doesn't make sense. I was telling colleagues the other day that it's a while since I looked at this data set. But way back when we first collected looked at this data back in 2012 2013. It was so striking how the city of Johannesburg which is the largest city of a population and economy has apparently, according to the system, less general waste production than something like the city of China or equivalent. And that just doesn't seem to stack up somehow. So the data seems to beg questions about what sits behind. How is the administrative systems that generate the data actually configured possibly differently in different cities which makes the data un-comparable. And so of course I could just go on and on and on Kim, but I'll stop there and just say, you know, with those kind of observations as well as, you know, emphasis on the port that Bogella was making that data is extremely fragmented. It's held in many different from hidden from view. And there's some officials somewhere who, you know, as this is stuff, but you know, the stuff never really gets out into the public domain in any systematic way. And so it's virtually unknown. You know, that's routine across the cities. And yeah, I'll stop there, but we can pick up on those threads as we go. I'm going to share this site now. So yeah, I think I think what you're saying is also bringing up this question of, you know, where is that data hidden from the general public. And if it's if it is hidden, who has access to that and, you know, how, how can the city make that data more accessible. And I'm just going to ask level or Musa, you know, are there any programs that the COJ is currently running or is there anything that the city is doing at the moment to make data more accessible. And are you are you struggling internally as well to find data and that reliability of data. And I'm also thinking back to what Lynelle said in her presentation about accountability and how accountability was just kind of thrown in there, but how data can be a huge part of accountability and proving all of these strategies and actions. So what, what is the city doing from the data, data perspective, data accessibility. Thank you. Thank you for the question, but I think I will not respond directly to the question that you have raised, but rather provide our experience when it comes to data availability for some of the projects that we are currently busy with. I think we, and I would like to echo what the previous speakers actually raised. There's, there's a challenge with, with data availability. I mean, as a city, we are on the one side data generator, but on the other side, we are the consumer of data. Now, for us to develop some of the strategies that we are working on, you find that we work with a lot of models, which is data as an input for us to work out different scenarios for planning purposes and all those. And we find that is either you will have an advantage when it comes to data that you have control over, that would be readily available for you. But the moment you want to drill deep in terms of getting specific things, especially for model inputs and all that, there's huge limitation in terms of that data availability. A case in point, maybe as an example, I would use the challenges that we've had with developing our vehicle emission control strategy. I mean, one would have assumed that traffic data and data as it relates to the registry of vehicles in the city of Johannesburg, that should be data that is readily available. It was a huge challenge, a mammoth task in terms of just locating who is the responsible authority that is sitting with that data. You, you get referred from one agency to another. And by the time you get that data is in a particular format, it's not user-friendly because some of this data is actually dated. It has been collected some years back, it's not updated and you sort of want to work with the most recent data that is available, which then on its own presents a challenge because whatever you're going to come up with in terms of your modeling results, it's not current and reflective of the current situation that you are dealing with. And that leaves then that we end up making a lot of assumptions and it then skews the whole picture of what we want to work with. I hope surely this is one thing that is cutting across different departments within the city. And it surely indicates a need for us to start working those different departments and different sectors in identifying possibly data streams that are key for planning and start coordinating and ensuring that this data is available, possibly the central point and it's managed and quality controlled for these papers. Thanks Musa. I think that's completely right and I think there's also a huge opportunity for other sources of data to be integrated. So I mean from that traffic perspective, there's some technologies out there that are being provided by Google and Waze and other platforms that are more like commercial maybe but that already have this kind of this data that could feed into city data and maybe the onus is not really on the city to provide that data but to collate it. And with respect to what metabolism cities has been doing, we've been trying to do that at some level is to collate this publicly available data into one portal for each city that we look at and have a decent overview of all of those different sectors and how they influence each other and what gaps are proving difficult to find in terms of data availability and reliability. And in essence, it's quite an incredible tool that you could use to improve the sustainability of your city. If you know where the gaps are, I mean, that's just a whole different vantage point in terms of where your opportunities lie to develop and what you need to work on. And that being said, I think that maybe there are some things that are done really well by the city of city of Johannesburg or external data providers. And I wonder what you come across anything that was done particularly well. That was like a really good data source for the city of Johannesburg. Was there was there anything that looked really resonated with you. There definitely were some, you know, you kind of came across some reports where I thought, oh, wow, this is really great information. For instance, I can't remember. So some of them were commissioned by the city of Johannesburg, but by, you know, external consultants to do these studies. And I remember specifically finding, I think it was two documents on the manufacturing industry in Johannesburg. And I found it so useful because especially for, you know, for the kind of data we were looking for is, you know, it actually, you know, gave information on all different manufacturers as well as where they located within the city of Johannesburg and, you know, what they, what they manufacture. And, you know, going through that, oh, God, this is so great. But, you know, also hoping that that kind of data or that kind of thing, you know, could be done maybe not every year, but at least, you know, every three to four years. Just to keep updating that. So that I found was quite good. And also just, I mentioned yesterday with reports to pick up reports. And obviously Graham has mentioned that, you know, some of the waste data may not be completely reliable. But just having that within the reports, I think it's quite a good thing and a good practice for pick it up to actually put their waste data in their reports. I guess the onus is on them to ensure that the data is reliable. So, yeah, I, and of course, you know, the, the IDPs and then that's that sort of reporting, you know, it does have useful data. And also, you know, on the city of Johannesburg's website, those, those documents are there and, you know, the early documents are there. And you can see that it's actually updated regularly. So I found that, I found that very useful. And the city of Johannesburg's website in general, I find it very interesting because even if you just search on Google, something about Johannesburg, the city of Joburg's website will pop up and they have these really cool, you know, like little blurbs about Joburg. And it may not be, you know, like a hardcore data set, but it often led me to, to, to knowing what I should look for and where I can, I can look for things and find things. So in that regard, I think Joburg is definitely, city of Joburg is definitely doing well. Fantastic. So, so I also just want to provide some, some, some context around what boy pillar has been doing for the last couple of months. And I want to share with you the, well, first, let me show you the link to it. And then I'm going to share my screen. So this is the Johannesburg city portal. I'm just going to share this in the chat. Oh, goodness. And then I'm going to share my screen and you can follow on screen. Can everyone see? Yeah. Okay. So this is, this is our data portal. And this is specifically for Johannesburg. And I'll take you back to the data hub, which has all of the cities that we're currently collecting data for. And we have, like I said, this has been a year long, years long journey into refining, you know, what is needed to determine urban metabolism for a city. And so there are four different layers here, context, biophysical infrastructure and stocks and flows. And this is just the dashboard for, for city of Johannesburg. And you can go through all of the data sets where Pilla has collected. And each one is properly referenced and the copywriters up to date and the links are up to date, because she's just completed this. But the idea behind this is that because we're contributing it open source, open access community, this will be constantly updated. And the idea is that, you know, we have more than one contributor for each city, and people take an interest in this and keep adding to the, to the volume of work. So here are also the publications and reports that she's found in the maps. So this might be incredibly interesting for GIS people at TOJ or the shapefiles that she's been able to collect around infrastructure, around trees, around mining, soil quality, and then multimedia that goes with that. So I mean, these are by media type. And then we can go into one of the layers. So the first layer is generally looking at the city boundaries. So you can see the shapefiles here, the web pages. And this is this context layers to do exactly that is to provide context about the city. And to be able to put things in perspective in terms of, you know, the size of infrastructure and the volume and size of stuff flows. And I mean, the level of detail here can vary. So it can be very broad, according to the data that's available, or can be extremely detailed. So it really depends on how good your data harvester is, how involved the community is in collecting their data and also what's available. So just as an aside, next week, we will also be having a session with all of our data harvesters. And we'll be looking at how data, data collection is varied between Johannesburg, Kigali, Paris, Singapore and Barcelona. Five very different cities. And something interesting, just something I always remember is how where pillars struggle to find information on trees and she eventually did. But in Barcelona, they have GIS coordinates of every single tree in the city. So the level of detail can really vary across cities, which I think is quite fascinating. So here is also like all of the biophysical traits and things that would feed into your natural infrastructure, your bodies of water, how that changes and climates and whatnot. What I also want to add here is that Waipala didn't do this on her own, she did a lot of her work, but she had a lot of guidance from one of our founders, Paul Hookman, who's created a series of instruction videos for each component of this data hub. And it's also turned into an online course that you can take that tells you what to look for in terms of the data set in terms of reliability in terms of copyrights and temporal scope. So like whether it's relevant within a certain timeframe, and you know how to go about getting the correct data here. So that's also freely available for use. And I'll just go through layer three as well as land use, agriculture, construction. There's also some mining, a little bit low electricity generation, energy storage. So everything, it is everything, which is why this is kind of a really unique resource and a really unique platform that it is everything and anyone can contribute. So please do take a look, sign up for free. It's just an email address. You can add notes and questions and comments to any of these and start conversations with people who are interested in it and add data sets as well. It would be so good to have a constantly updating resource. So this might be of interest to Musa and level as well the transport stuff in terms of where everything is. And this could very well be updated from the vehicle vehicle emissions project that you have ongoing. Yeah, it's really quite comprehensive and I'll go through stocks and flows. So a stock is a volume of any resource. So just like you'd have like fish stock or stuck in your retail. You would have the same thing for any of your industries and a flow would be the movement of that resource from one place to another, or how it flows through the city. So you can see here that it's like really comprehensive. It looks at everything including livestock, funny enough in Kigali as well. They have they have really good census data of chickens and goats because people people keep them in their home. So it was part of the census data. So you could see where all the goats and chickens are within the city. It's quite interesting. But yeah, it really does go go quite quite into it. And here's some air quality stuff. I know that the air quality reporting is quite good in City of Johannesburg. So it's all here and really quite quite interesting. So you can browse this whole library. You can click on each of these and you'll be able to see the full record in terms of, you know, what it's referring to who authored it. You can download, you can download it and yeah, and you can add comments as you please. So I'm just going to go show you this, the all of the cities that have currently been done. So we have a large number of South American cities that have been included in this because we have a huge class of South American students that are currently doing online costs and data harvesting. So you can see here the status of all of these cities in terms of data collection. And the status doesn't necessarily mean that all the data that exists for this context layer has been collected. It just means that a certain number of documents have been fulfilled. And within those categories. So, I mean really at sea now. It's quite extensive. So with that, I want to, I want to just check how we're doing for time we're at an hour now. I'd like to open it up for any questions or comments from the audience. And if not, I'd like level would you mind talking to us a little bit about about the data champions forum. Oh, here we go. We have some hands. Hello. Was that an old hand money? I think what pillow doesn't realize them. No, no, no, no. My meat button wasn't working. I kept clicking on meat, but it wasn't working. I just had just have one more comment with with regards to at least one one data source, I'd say is there are a lot of. You know, there's a lot of research coming out of universities about the city of Johannesburg. I don't know what what the process is maybe with the city, but I can give an example. I did my research on the city of cake town, and I actually had to register with the city to, you know, they had to give me permission to do my research. And, you know, another condition of them approving me or allowing me to do my research was that I send them my thesis when I'm done. And I think, you know, even considering something like that is a good way to collect data because just going through the internet. I found a lot of academic research on the city of Johannesburg. That's quite useful. And I think the city could also look into into that for for, um, yeah, just beefing up, you know, their data. That's that's all. Thanks folks. Um, Monique. Good morning, everyone. And thank you very much for all of the information, especially because we at the, I'm at the Joberg smart city. And one of the things that we're pushing on now is, you know, data governance policies, as well as trying to get our data repository together so that we kind of have one centralized location for data. And then also, of course, just being able to understand the different levels of sensitivity of the data that that comes out. And so I would, you know, like this to also be a continuum of effort, because the data that you're collecting, if it's being sourced from universities and external sources, and it's not very sensitive and this is probably the one that we can utilize for citizens and residents and academics, etc. to be able to have access to, you know, which is an important layer of data accessibility for anyone who wants to review our city or work in the city or develop a business in the city or develop a new idea to improve the city. So I was just wondering if there has been discussion with we're working with the South African cities network, who are helping us to build that. I'm just wondering if there is engagement between your organization and theirs, so that again, we're not getting variant data sets, we're really trying to make sure there's one version of the truth. Even if that means data sharing and using similar data or analyzing similar data. I just want to make sure that that alignment is there, and that you know about it for for students to plan adequately. Sure, so from my personal perspective, I don't think we have a connection with the South African cities network. I'm not sure I'm one person in but a larger group of people, but it would be very interesting to connect with them and if you if you would connect us that would be great. I also think that, you know, instead of trying instead of duplicating work I think if you wanted to use this research resource or if the cities network wanted to use this resource. It is open and freely available, like I said you just need to like basically log in with your an email address. And you can use that as freely as you'd like and add to it so it can really become your own platform. And that's the idea is that like it's a share economy in terms of data. And it would be, I think the city of Johannesburg is also, I think that's also why the interest is here is that, you know, it's a unique resource where everything is collated and organized quite nicely. And if the city also steps in and uses this as a way to manage their data, or as a way to just have an overview of what's publicly available. It could be incredibly useful going forward. So yeah, it would be great to connect with SSC in is it and see how we can how we can collaborate and work together. Absolutely. Graham, you wanted to have your hand up. Just have to say that I've been having a look at the really is a fantastic, fantastic resource. And, you know, GCO sometimes gets confronted with this question, why are you not more of a data warehouse? You know, because if you had all the data that is collected across Kharting in one place, everyone would be so much richer. And you really do see the value of that kind of thing in what you've produced. I mean, it's particularly compelling because, you know, once you begin to see the list of what's under each of those headings, you then begin to think about all the things that you know about that should also probably be there. And so it almost starts to auto generate its own, you know, further contributions. And it would be great to see whether we can, you know, through the facilities that begin to put some of our own data sets that we've collected over the years onto that onto that facility. I just wanted to ask two questions. First, the question is, are there any limits in what can be put on there that we should be mindful of? You know, for example, would be fantastic if, you know, where we do see points of excellence and thinking here Dylan of the of the shapefiles that you've collected on parks, for example. And, you know, are there any limits to city departments putting the stuff that they've collected onto the site? And, you know, was it just sort of completely open? And secondly, you know, obviously once a data harvester, which is a warm body in a seat, you know, stops performing their role. Do you have any sense of what is likely to be the continuation of the of the process of uploading data? Do you want to hand this over to someone in the city in order to keep it going in some way? Okay, cool. Very interesting questions. In terms of limits, I don't know if I'm fully technologically qualified to answer, but I will say that instead of being a file repository, we're more of a data source repository. So like, instead of hosting big files, we we have the links to those those files, which can also come at a cost because sometimes links expire. So I'm going to refer that question to the future and come back to you with that in terms of, you know, what's what's best. I don't know if Karen is actually on this call if she wants to answer the question or she knows the answer. But in terms of data harvesters. So yes, warm bodies and seats is amazing. And it's been really incredible to have people dedicated to this in the last few months. But I think, you know, you'd be you'd be very surprised in terms of people volunteering this information and volunteering their time. There are some incredibly passionate and enthusiastic people out there, including the people that founded metabolism of cities. And it is unreal their energy in terms of, you know, being able to contribute to these these these these platforms and continuously just working towards more sustainable cities in this way. So I think, you know, yes, it is it has been great to have a dedicated person but I do also foresee this taking on its own life in terms of, you know, eventually getting the word out there we've only really had this platform running for the last couple months. And getting people involved, getting organizations involved would be really great for them to use it because it's a two way system. You give data and you also you get this amazing organizational tool to to review all this data per peruse all this data. So, I mean, I see it taking a life on its own and it's not necessarily a handover. It's open freely available and it will evolve as as it goes along. And we've seen that a lot for the South American cities. And that's just taken a life on its own. I mean, 50 different cities have been uploaded just from one cohort of people. So the enthusiasm is there. And speaking of enthusiasm, one of those amazing people is Carolyn Belstadt, who just put up her hand. Carolyn, hi. Thanks for this nice intro. Yeah, so I'm also part of metabolism cities, working more on the research side and building up this platform and we're currently exploring going into a dashboard design as well, as was mentioned in the chat. But to answer your questions, I'm not too concerned about replacing the warm body in the seats. Because even if it's vacant personally from metabolism cities, we're really in it for the long run. And even if the seat is vacant for half a year or so, someone will come and pick this up because, like Kim said, we have so many people interested in collaborating and participating, be it from a city's perspective or being for personal research, someone writing their thesis, for example. So I think that's okay. We could certainly discuss handings over to the city is also okay if the seat is shared amongst many people, which is all we're also trying to really make this accessible and easily understandable where we are in terms of data collection. So which of these layers are actually covered. And to address your second point around the data and what the limits are, that's certainly true in terms of like Kim has said as well, and data size. And if there's very large data files, we'd rather not have them. And the second limitation is copyrighted data, just because for legal reasons. It's very it's a it's a tricky territory to get into actually host copyrighted data on our server. And since we want to embed later on process the data and then embedded on the platform in terms in terms of visualizations, we'd much rather prefer that everything is open source or we have rights to actually use the data so that visualizations can then also widely shared without any restrictions or limitations. So I hope this answers your questions. Thanks. Fantastic. So, I mean, I also want to just add to that in terms of in terms of people, people having enough passion and having enough momentum to be able to do this themselves. So I've also just shared to the chat, a link to education portal. And that's where a lot of our online courses are. And like I said, Paul, who is one of the founders, he has created an online course that guides you through this whole data collection process. And I mean, you can you can go to whatever layer you're interested in and learn more about why you choose those specific data sets. And then there's also some resources in terms of understanding urban metabolism from a policymaker policymaker's perspective and understanding how that can also help you improve your policies and improve the way that we go about creating sustainable cities through policy. So I think, you know, take a look at that education portal because this, I mean, the courses are quite short, and the videos are quite short. And they packed with information can be really quite can be very interesting, even if you're just looking not in terms of data collection but in terms of a relevant sector to understand, you know, what what kind of what's relevant in the scheme of things, and where to look for things. It's really quite interesting. So, I want to just do a final check. Does anybody else have any questions or comments. No, I don't know. Lebo, do you want to talk a little bit more about the data champions forum, or was that Harvey. He speaks to that, but I think Monique also shared some of the initiatives that the city is exploring, I would I would actually add to speak to the issue. Thanks. So are they on the call now. The one that posted the message here that let me see. No, it's about this much city committee. So it's pretty much what Monique was reporting. Okay. The COO's office is working on a city data governance policy. So I think it's actually quite delightful that we have Monique on call, because we've been talking to them also around how do we streamline data. Requirements in data flows across the city, but because you've given me this opportunity, I think, you know, it's actually awesome that as a community of COD, we are now exposed to possibility. We need to just probably, you know, almost consolidate our way forward in terms of how are we going to leverage an opportunity such as this. Yeah, so I just want to leave it there. Thanks. Yeah, fantastic. So I think, you know, this platform is quite, it's like I said, it's unique. It's also an interface where, you know, I think in this field of sustainability, a lot can be lost between people doing the actual research and people creating policies and how that actually plays out in the real world. And really one of our missions is to make that happen and make that happen in an efficient way and make sure that it's deeply rooted in reliable data. So a platform like this can be really useful for connecting those people, for connecting researchers, for connecting people that are finding the data, and connecting policymakers. And I really think that this tool, and I mean the whole organization itself can be kind of a catalyst for positive change in terms of data management in terms of accessibility. And, you know, this is a growing trend throughout the world and in these very progressive cities is that there are more and more cities that have open data portals. And that could be, that's like all of the data, so how many streetlights there are, you know, and have it all in one central repository. And it's really becoming, it's becoming quite an interesting world to live in where there's so much transparency. And there's so much information available for people to help co-create solutions and help have perspective on the size of our problems and the potential of our solutions. So I really think that there's a lot of potential here and there's a lot of work that's being done already. And it's just about linking everybody together and keeping that relationship going. So with that being said, if there aren't any more questions, so there's some steps that you can take to, you do? Hi, Lenique. Go ahead. I just wanted to jump in. It sounds like you're winding down. I'm sorry to interject. Before you give some concluding remarks. You know, there was just a couple of things that was going through my mind. One, what is the marketing plan for this? I'm really trying to stay focused on this smart citizen and as you say, the co-production, the collaboration, how do we bring ideas and give platforms for young people, especially in young innovators, to know what's there and to participate? So I think the question is how do we open this and how do we market this and how do we get this information out there? And what is it that people can do in order to connect with this? Like, is there an open meeting that you have to discuss this or the webinars? You know, what is the ongoing plan so that there's an outreach activity that is happening alongside of this? And I'm saying this because, you know, again, I would like to be able to maybe, if you have an article that you use in order to let people know then that's something that we would want to take and then ask communications to maybe highlight it as something that Smart City is doing or we're trying to get a Facebook page and a social media page up. This would then be something that we would want to be able to share on that page for people to access. So essentially, how do we market this so that people are aware of it? How do I send it through to all the different tech hubs that we are engaging with so that they're aware? That's the one. And then how do we do something that's more, so when I'm talking about us creating a data repository, you did say that we could always connect through it online. But is there something more proactive that we can be doing? And is there any suggestions from you or the team as to what that might look like other than what I've just expressed? So fantastic point. I think I was kind of rolling in there anyway with what's happening next. So this is the first of these city sessions that we've had. And I think it's been an incredibly interesting conversation. And we're going to be having four more of these on other cities. So like I said, Kigali, Paris, Singapore and Barcelona are the other cities that we've been doing intensive data collection on, but also just more in general on different topics that are arising over conversations about this. And we are having a session next week, which compares all five cities. That's Janisburg, Kigali, Paris, Barcelona and Singapore. That goes through the data harvesters and their experience and how things differed. I've been in constant communication with all data harvesters for the last couple of months. And it is fascinating the differences between cities and how cities manage their data. And it's going to be a really good session. So that's next week, Thursday, which I'll also for the invitation for. But we do also have in terms of ongoing participation and ongoing engagement. We have onboarding sessions, meetings where we introduce the organization and we have face to face with new people that join as contributors for them to learn more about the organization and what they can do and how our work and tasks works. So, like I said, we're a volunteer-led organization. So that means that every single component of work gets done by a volunteer at some point. So we have a system on our main website around our community where you can take up work pieces that contributes towards the building of the data hub. It can contribute towards creating education tools. It can contribute to marketing and writing blogs. So there are multiple things that are already listed on the website in terms of work pieces that people can get involved in. And that's like a very active process. So you go in and you can assign yourself a work piece and have conversations with people about it, how to do it, there's instructions. And there's like a whole point system that works into it so you can see who's contributed the most and badges that you earn and it's become quite an interactive process. So in terms of actively participating, there's also that component of it of metabolism of cities. But what I'm also hearing is like a very nice call for collaboration, I think. And I think it would be really great for us to also connect outside of this in terms of how we can make a partnership potentially work. So I hope that answers all your questions that we should definitely connect outside this call. Yeah, awesome. Nice to see your face. So I will now wind down because we are reaching an hour and a half. I don't know if anyone from COJ would like to make any concluding remarks before I go to my last few steps. Thank you, Kim. It will be a two-part session. I want to hand over to Mosa, but I'm actually quite happy that Monique has actually taken interest in this because across the city we do really need an anchor from which this kind of initiative, especially when we're talking about data, can be coordinated so that it also informs the policy that she will be working on as to what kind of data are we going to be sharing and form. Are we going to do that? So in terms of the next step, obviously, you've made a commitment to engage with Monique, but I want to also urge Monique that as a COJ community, we need to put our heads together so that we then consolidate on how we are going to take this kind of opportunity forward. I'm sort of repeating myself, but I think it's just a part of this. How this thing came about is through Mosa's and the digital community experience in getting air quality related data. And we then realized that it's actually a bigger opportunity than just data on air quality. So we can take it forward that way. It's offline with yourself and Monique, like Tim and Monique, but I think we need Monique at any time to consolidate how it is going to take this forward. Mosa, you can come in. Tim's label, you've actually covered me in your response. It just shows that I've now worked with you for too long. But just one thing that I wanted to also include, I think the point that was mentioned by Monique around South African cities network, I think that's another area of collaboration that we might have to consider exploring further. And maybe there could be a need for a bilateral Kim from your side. And maybe Monique can facilitate that. Because at least at that level, we know that the city's network is working with a number of cities and you might also above this, you might also want to work with those cities and we start seeing the material flows in these different cities for comparison. Thank you. Thanks, Mosa. So yeah, I'm going to just make some concluding remarks. Does anyone else have any questions? I think I saw a hand go up and then went down. Yes, I think there was a hand for all draw. On there actually. Mosa, thank you so much. Okay, it was a false hand. All right. So I actually just wanted to tie everything back to the nails presented presentation in the beginning. You know, I think it's really good to ground what is what the city of Johannesburg is trying to do in terms of environmental policy and in terms of creating a more sustainable city and how, you know, I found that every single component of that plan requires some sort of data and requires some sort of transparency in terms of how things are changing over time. And data can be such a crucial part of marking progress of quantifying problems of quantifying the effective solutions. And it's, it just puts a spotlight on how important data availability is data accessibility in terms of the public in terms of researchers being able to find what they need, and being able to do so timeously and being able to do so with reliable information. So our data hub is just an example of how, how we're trying to approach this problem and how we're trying to create everything together and make this a communication platform for people to connect around the data sources and to use them in the best way possible. And, you know, this process, this data harvesting process is just one step in a process that, you know, refines that data analyzes it and give some some sort of output, whether it be a dashboard or a graphic or something like that. This is the first step in a longer process. And I think that partnerships with cities going forward are going to be incredibly interesting to get in from this first step. And yeah, I think it links in very well with the policies. And I hope that you'll find some news from this session. We do have, like I said, some upcoming events. I've shared a link now with all the events coming up from the tablets in the city side. Right now there's only one, there's one upcoming event, but there'll be more added so please do attend the following sessions, because I think there'll be just as interesting. And thank you so much for attending and for your participation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. From the city side of crime, you wanted to say something? He's on mute. You're on mute. I keep doing that. Sorry. I just wanted to say thanks from GCO for the opportunity to participate in this. It's really great. Thank you. How did you read my mind? Sorry. But I wanted to say yes. Thank you very much Kim for bringing the opportunity to us. Obviously, as City of Joe, we are very interested in this. And there will be, I think, many, many iterations with you until we get an even, you know, like a solid way of meaningfully engaging on this. As you know, the kind of data that we keep some of it is not supposed to be in the public domain. So we really, really need to flesh out how and what type of data are we going to make available. The beauty of what I'm seeing also here is that we will for once be able to see a citywide kind of data, you know, through the system, because currently what is happening is that all the data is sitting in the different in the little silos in people's computers, et cetera. But if we start to participate in this portal, there is an opportunity for us to mainstream data and actually out all those opportunities around the multiple uses of data because I might look at my data in a particular way only to find that there's other opportunities for the next person and so on. So yeah, from our side, and you know, I want to also thank Nobando and Tim for setting this up as a city learning program. And we will be looking, yeah, we will be relying on you also to give us data as to this way. I do see also links with the MOU that we have worked in the university. We made a point earlier on to say that, you know, ever so often students come to the city, they do research in the city, but there isn't necessarily a big flow in terms of that research being also in the position of the city. So we need to be working on all those things. We might just be saving the city a lot of money because my sense is that we get to pay for the same data over and over again because it's not really available. Yeah, and with that, I want to thank everyone that has participated in the team. Lunel is always in a corner in terms of the overall coordinator of our sustainability program. And I'm very thankful that she could make herself available to at least frame our perspective around the kind of data that we need from an environmental sustainability point of view. And yeah, thank you very much. Moussa, I don't know whether you are talking that side or you want to say something like that. You are on blue and I thought that blue means that you are talking on the other side. Okay, I'll talk to Moussa offline. Okay, thank you very much colleagues. Have a good day. Thanks so much everyone. Thank you, thank you, Tim. I hope it's not the last time we interact. Looking forward to working with you again. Much appreciated. Have a lovely day. Enjoy U.S. Tim. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. So, Lebo, you'll contact me first to set up a follow-up. Pardon? You'll contact me to set up a follow-up. Yes, yes.