Project 8: Global platform, greater good

Food. Water. Energy. Demand for these basic human needs is shifting as populations continue to grow and become more urban.

With the global population estimated to reach 8 billion by 2030, we cannot wait to plan for human needs, sustainability and growth. What we need is an integrated view of how to tackle these global issues – and support future generations.

Project 8 is making that possible.

Project 8 (P8) offers global development organizations and researchers a single online platform and community: For accessing and analyzing data. Sharing exciting findings. And collaborating on important topics – from food security to the future of agriculture.

Global problems require global solutions. For the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Foundation and several other organizations, working to predict and plan for the future was nothing new. But their efforts had been isolated – based on their own data, projections and mathematical models.

Leaders from these institutions – as well as Accenture, Nielsen, Salesforce, The Conference Board and The Demand Institute – saw a pressing need for global collaboration. With the ability to share data, organizations would be better able to understand challenges, mobilize and align resources, and support effective decision- and policymaking.

These forward-thinking organizations teamed up to create Project 8 – a global platform that serves as a repository for global data and exchange of ideas. By connecting data from many organizations, Project 8 is closing the research and data gap in the global development sector.

Project 8 is also a digital collaboration tool. This online community provides a space for those tasked with figuring out future human needs to collaborate on the predictive science behind human needs modeling.