Qlik and United Nations Debut Carbon Reduction Application to Help CXOs Create Data-Driven Sustainability Initiatives

A regular part of that effort is engaging the larger community with hackathons, which regularly create real world applications that we share with the world. This week, we unveiled the latest example of those efforts, a Qlik Sense app developed for the United Nations (UN) to help better understand and manage global air travel to reduce CO2 emissions and improve air quality through data. The app was unveiled as part of a webinar, titled “The CXO’s Guide to Data-Driven Sustainability,” where I co-presented with Greg Ogolla, an Information Systems Officer at the UN. You can register to listen to a recording of the webinar here.

This final version of this UN app is based on the work from last year’s annual customer and partner event hackathon, which challenged participants to think about air travel’s negative environmental impact. It is one in a series of apps we are developing to deliver emissions and performance dashboards, in agreement with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and with industry leaders from multiple sectors. Together, these apps will help any business obtain a clearer and fuller picture of their carbon footprint, enabling organizations to make real-time decisions – powered by data – to mitigate climate change. Future planned apps will help businesses measure and address issues beyond air travel impact, including supply chains, office space and real estate utilization, as well as electricity consumption.

As Greg Ogolla states during the webinar, “Beyond the carbon emissions reporting for the environmental sustainability group, the dashboard is also now being used to provide input to the senior management compacts in a kind of performance review for departments by the executive officers.”

As a society, fighting climate change will continue at the same level of collective urgency, diligence and dedication as we are now responding to the COVID-19 public health crisis. Governments, policymakers and businesses must band together as we transition toward recovery and return to what, undoubtedly, will be a new normal. That new normal must acknowledge the lessons learned this year that demonstrate how many business activities can be conducted virtually, thus driving down global CO2 emissions. Life has become and will be different, and, as we look toward the future, we must see climate change as a crisis requiring its own set of management tools. We will continue to develop such tools through apps available to all organizations to help drive measurable climate action through data-driven decision making.

To see the UN app we demonstrated recently, click here to sign up to hear the recording of the webinar. If you wish to receive a free version of the app with anonymized data, please reach out to [email protected].