Transforming biowaste into business value
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How do we collaborate and communicate effectively online? How can we enable informed decision making in this new distributed reality? How can we ensure that everyone is connected?
COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of the networks linking the world together and challenged us to reimagine how we work together and maintain those connections. At the same time, it has presented us with a complex problem that reaches beyond borders and raises economic, political, and social questions as well as medical ones. We need to enable experts across multiple disciplines to collaborate effectively and marshal enormous amounts of information as we formulate the best ways to limit the spread of the disease and to identify and protect the people most vulnerable to its effects.
UNDP PAA team wanted to be very clear about what we as an organization want to achieve and how would our future look like? And then retrace our steps to figure out if we want to achieve that at all, what would we need to change, and what are the pieces along the way that will get us there? Who are the people? What are the levels of change? What are the possible barriers? What is the resourcing behind that? How would we need to change our culture? How do we actually get there?
The pandemic has also accelerated changes in a world that is becoming more digitally connected. With smart cities and the Internet of Things, we are building digital infrastructure in which energy, sanitation, health services and other systems are part of the same connected system. We have new sources of information about the world, through social media, crowd-sourced observation and open data repositories. Organizations are working, thinking and connecting differently. If we don’t spend time, energy, and manpower exploring and co-developing pilots and prototypes then we are likely to be left behind and this will impact our (UNDP) competitiveness, and our ability to grow.
With these questions and issues in mind, we carried out a series of short-term, results-focused projects . We looked for the biggest opportunities, the places where spatial computing can contribute the most in the short term.
Spatial computing is broadly synonymous with extended reality (XR) – itself an umbrella term for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. These are all visually impressive technologies, but for UNDP and our development work, we needed to identify use-cases where they could provide useful results, and understand in practical terms what it takes to implement them effectively.
When you hear Pokemon GO – you know it is Augmented Reality. As a response to development challenges, the United Nations Virtual Reality (UNVR) series uses Virtual Reality immersive storytelling to inspire greater empathy and understanding around today’s major humanitarian challenges. For Spatial Computing (extended reality), think of the film The Matrix (minus killer robots!). The headset creates a full 360-degree environment that entirely replaces the real world. You can be standing in your office, and seem to be on a tropical seashore or the top of a skyscraper. It’s powerfully immersive. The disadvantage is, your sight is entirely blocked; you can’t see or hear the real world and the people around you (so watch your steps).
All these technologies are visually spectacular and entertaining, but what are the practical applications? We identified two initial problems that these technologies can address.
Even before the pandemic, UNDP has been actively working on reducing its environmental footprint and set itself ambitious targets. Curbing travel is one of the key levers for us to do so. We need to be able to collaborate and connect with people far away, and bring expert knowledge to places where it is needed.
UNDP’s Moonshot initiative aims to reduce greenhouse emissions from operations and facilities 25 percent by 2025 and half by 2030, while ensuring that programming and operations are socially and environmentally sustainable.
Current solutions haven’t entirely met our needs. Video conferencing, chat and document sharing can’t offer the faster communication, ease of rapport, spontaneity and sense of connection that in-person meetings do – let’s not forget ZOOM fatigue: National Geographic, APRIL 24, 2020 ‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens). Like other experiences associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Zoom fatigue is widely prevalent, intense, and completely new. Why do we find video calls so draining? We need to focus more intently on conversations in order to absorb information, while staring for a long time at the screen directly without any visual or mental break, which is tiring.
Scientists are still puzzling out why in-person communication is superior. Spatial computing can be used for telepresence: allowing people in different locations to work together in a shared virtual space, almost as if they were in the same room, preserving the body language and spontaneity that come with face-to-face contact.
“People trust one another more when they share a communal meal off of the same plate instead of eating from individual plates, and the brain becomes unstable with solitary confinement.”
Video conferencing tools, can’t replicate the same experience, and are creating sort of a “socially distance” feeling.“ It doesn’t feel like a conversation at times. It’s people lecturing at people, which can be tiring,” says psychotherapist Jeffrey B. Rubin, Ph.D.
UNDP PAA is working exploring how spatial technologies can help UNDP to improve its work and collaborative experiences. Our mission is to understand better how “crazy technologies” can amplify the work of all UNDP employees not the other way around.
We explored remote collaboration – remote missions with our UNDP Colombia country office by partnering with Spatial to create a shared meeting room, equipped with three-dimensional displays and interactive collaboration tools to allow policy-makers in remote locations to meet in a shared virtual work-space, to communicate and experience an immersive presentation about the development challenges and potential crisis management solutions surrounding the Amazon forest.
UNDP PAA work was promoted in numerous media, like Bloomberg and Forbes.
A video record of PAA UNDP Colombia virtual space may be found here.
Travel also incurs risk, now more than ever. The danger of infection from COVID-19 has drastically limited the amount of travel we can do and has forced the cancellation of meetings and conferences such as Innovation Days and UNDP’s global meetings. Even without the coronavirus, political situations, emergent crises and other safety-related issues regularly cause mission delays and cancellations.
3D Content Creation: spatial computing happens in three dimensions, so making it effective requires the specialized work of 3D modellers and animators. Any spatial computing project needs to allow for the need to find specialized providers, and the time and expense involved.
Changing the Culture: Even when a new product works better than the old, there are always inconveniences and cultural resistance to making changes. We worked with our colleagues at remote offices to understand what they need from those technologies, and to identify the obstacles to adopting new solutions.
This work is only the beginning! The real potential of spatial computing is much greater and is part of a growing paradigm shift in our digital lives: how we work, how we live and connect to each other. The PAA project is devoted to using spatial computing to facilitate that change, not only within UNDP but outside it – to make UNDP a leader in the adoption and application of these technologies.
Do you want to know more? Or pilot with us — write to: marina.petrovic@undp.org
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