Digital Transformation with Sustainable Standards

BY RAY WALSH

How artificial intelligence and ICT Standards can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and achieve digital transformation in parallel with sustainability.

Artificial intelligence is quite broad and is what’s known as a horizontal technology. In other words, it’s one of those foundational technologies that crosses across various sectors. There are lots of these types of technologies like 5G, big data, and IoT, which are multi-sectoral or multi-field oriented.

By looking at where AI intersects with agriculture, automotive, manufacturing, finance, and health, we can get an idea of where these synergies would be with other horizontal technologies. Because with a lot of these technologies, it’s hard to draw a ring around where that ecosystem of AI ends and another begins. It tends to be a mesh of ICT technologies. The logistics end of it is also controlled by AI: prediction, analysis, and identification.

AI is pervasive. We walk around with smart systems in our pockets with our mobile phones. We use predictor mechanisms on our websites to get better responses from vendors. We use social media AI for bringing content that’s of interest to us. So AI is everywhere. We use it all the time. So then we have the Sustainable Development Goals. And what I found is that AI can affect all of them.

Social SDGs: Zero Hunger, Good Health & Well-Being, Quality Education, and Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions

From a societal perspective, we have multiple uses for AI on a global scale. For example, AI can help with more efficient agricultural practices in terms of pesticides and fertilizer, reducing cost and waste and addressing scourges such as viruses.

Technologies can also contribute to public health. For example, AI is very powerful and accurate when looking at radiography-type images and X-rays in terms of detecting particularly negative outcomes concerning those scans.

To improve the quality of education, big changes have to happen in broadband deployment worldwide: Over 3 billion people don’t have access to online facilities.

AI is also important for food, water, energy, health, education, climate, and the ocean, and all of these relate to the social SDGs. For example, AI is being used to control robots harvesting plastic from the ocean, and they are automatically or autonomously controlled. And they deposit their collected plastic to be disposed of from the ocean.

Economic SDGs: No Poverty, Gender Equality, Economic Growth, Innovation & Infrastructure, and Reduced Inequalities

We want to create environments where people can be more productive and there is better performance of economic tools being used. For AI in big data, we have to distribute ledger technology, which will create a more secure environment for transactions. The AI aspect would be the smart contracts, which are triggered at the delivery of the goal for the DLT technology. And these create faster and cheaper payment systems.

The human-digital gender gap is a big thing: More males are digitally literate than females. So we can use education and AI tools to do online training. And we can use remote delivery systems once we have the infrastructure for that.

Interoperability and standardization are big things for the economic SDGs. If you want to have interoperable AI systems that impact SDGs, you need to have standards. And standards allow you to reduce barriers to entry when it comes to technologies, particularly global technologies like the internet and digital communication systems.

Environmental SDGs: Clean Water, Clean Energy, Sustainable Cities, Climate Action, Life Below Water, Life on Land

Next, we’re going to look at the environmental SDGs. Sensors with AI systems built into them can work in all sorts of environments on land, in the air, underwater, or in water. They’re constantly monitoring the state of our natural environment. And based on the data that’s being collected and aggregated, we can make decisions about what we want to achieve in terms of our environment.

I mentioned we have AI harvesting plastics in our oceans, but you also do the same thing for smart water management, monitoring flow and control. We can also monitor the quality of water. We can look at water and air pollutants. And all of this can be used to improve the quality of life for citizens.

For energy efficiency and renewable resources, we have AI systems that help not just to design and develop renewable resources but also to manage them and improve their performances. In terms of procurement and construction of performance indicators for smart, sustainable cities, you can have smart systems involved in those logistical parts as well.

You can use AI with e-waste, recycling and managing the complete logistical pipeline associated with creating digital tools, technologies, and services, and then at the end

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of the life cycle as well.

AI and big data can monitor, moderate, and adapt the effects of climate change, including geomonitoring from satellite imagery, monitoring of storms and sea levels, and temperature for climate change. Also, the impact on wildlife: If you can monitor and predict how migrations and deforestation happen and where you have poaching, you can improve the climatic and environmental impact by controlling those situations using satellite imagery.

And then, we have an inclusive digital society, which involves looking at the main standards and developing organizations in that space, which would be ITU, a UN organization, and ISO, which is a global international standards organization, and European Union instruments as well.

United Nations: UNECE WP.6

The UNECE WP.6 looks at a specific SDG. And gender responsiveness is really important when it comes to standardization. The default example is when crash test dummies were created, they were modeled on the male anatomy, resulting in more females being injured in crashes.

We must be more gender-responsive in creating technologies and standards. It encourages regulatory coherence, which has a critical impact on sustainable development and promotes better resilience and more robustness when it comes to hazards. We promote the use of standards by policymakers and businesses to reduce technical barriers to trade and to foster innovation and good governance. And we advocate the use of standards and implementing UN-wide goals, including implementation of Agenda 2030 and the Sendai Framework for action.

As a result, the UN issued what is known as the Gender Declaration. Most nations have signed it, and now we’re looking at gender action plans and implementing new projects and activities that will support inclusivity and diversity in all aspects of society, but particularly relating to standards of gender responsiveness.

EU Strategy

The European Commission, the European Industry Consortia, EU member states, and EU Standards Development Organizations have prioritized ICT standardization as a key enabler of the European Digital Single Market. To facilitate this, it has been front and center within the policy and strategy of the EU.

Global trade requires interoperability and collaboration. ICT Standards Development is interoperability by consensus. It’s the agreement of national bodies worldwide before a standard gets implemented. That’s what we put into the innovative products. If you put all of this standardization paraphernalia into your development of tools, technologies, services, and products, your customers get confidence, quality, and trust.

That’s a quick run-through of AI systems and standardization worldwide and where they can be applied. If this has piqued your interest, you should contact your national body and become active in European and international standardization.

Ray Walsh

Assistant Professor, Dublin City University

Dublin, Ireland

Ray Walsh is a senior researcher at the ADAPT Research Centre at Dublin City University. He joined the School of Computing DCU in 1995, where he delivers AI, IoT, and data governance modules. He has been a digital leader with the World Economic Forum since 2016 and was appointed to the IEEE European Public Policy Committee on ICT in 2019 as the AI WG Lead.