Urban food systems diagnostic and metrics framework : roadmap for future geospatial and big data analytics

The world is becoming increasingly urbanized. By 2050, an estimated two-thirds of the global population will live in cities. The food systems report underscores the significant challenges arising from the dearth of data on and empirical analysis of food systems, which constitutes a major impediment to advancing work in this new and diverse area. This report represents the first step in discussing an urban food diagnostic and metric framework and identifying data needs and innovative ways to collect information for this nascent urban food agenda. It builds on the food systems report to provide a conceptual basis for potential indicators, their data requirements, and eventually the different ways to collect the data for monitoring and evaluation functions in future urban food systems’ projects and programs. It identifies potential data sources including the use of newer technologies such as big data, geospatial, mobile applications, blockchain, sensors, and citizen science. The report is organized into four chapters. The first chapter sets out the context for the report, presents the objectives, outlines the major urban food systems outcome areas, and presents the transform framework, which underscores the importance of these interlinked outcome areas to future food systems. Chapter two introduces the urban food system diagnostic and metrics framework and discusses its different components. Chapter three examines different approaches to collect various types of data for urban food metrics and diagnostics. Chapter four concludes in reviewing the current limitations and future steps in carrying out potential testing in selected cities.