This mainly addresses target 7.3 as outlined by the UN in SDG 7, with a clear focus on improving the efficiency of worldwide energy resources, where a tab would be available to show the current forecast of rate of improvement of global energy efficiency using real-time data .
The project could also be used for target 7.1 to provide local governments and administrators with clear visuals and data to show the reliability of electricity access as well as the feasibility of multiple different potential resources.
The analysis places an clear emphasis on the impact of COVID-19 on the UN targets, and aims to explain any significant trends seen, such as a reduction in reliable electricity connections in certain regions, in a causal manner.
We were inspired by this challenge as all members of the team felt that the impact of the virus on sustainability would be an important thing to (a) analyse to find out the depth of the issue, and (b) suggest interesting and varied solutions to, along with other teams. With an international team consisting of an energy engineer, some physics students and data scientists, SDG 7 seemed an appropriate problem to address, and we hope the findings are able to be useful even in a post-COVID world.
The initial dashboard design was set up at creaproject.co using the Neustar/Porkbun access for Space Apps participants. While this is very much an initial design, due to communication issues taking up a large proportion of our time, we hope that the basic idea can be well understood and that the potential for improvements and utility can be seen.
Specific data we used included:
and we believe there is plenty more data which can be used to help solve this problem.
The main challenge we had was regarding communication and experience. As a team with little cumulative hackathon experience, it became difficult early on to ensure clarity of thinking and clear communication of ideas; after many team reshuffles morale seemed to decrease for day 2 and hence the final submission is not quite as advanced as we had initially hoped it would be.