Frontier Data Network
The rapid advancement of data technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Earth Observation, has created unprecedented opportunities to address global challenges. Yet, these innovations often remain out of reach for the humanitarian sector.
The Frontier Data Network (FDN) bridges this divide, leveraging cutting-edge technologies to improve outcomes for children worldwide.
Watch this short 3-minute overview to learn how:
UPCOMING EVENTS
Advancing Child-Centered AI: Practitioners and Partnerships
JUNE 18, 2025 | 5 – 7 PM | NEW YORK (IN-PERSON)
As part of the Development Data Partnership (DDP) annual meeting and in alignment with the UN’s Year of AI, UNICEF will host a high-level event spotlighting AI’s potential to drive progress for children and societies. This event exemplifies the Frontier Data Network’s broader efforts to create and empower communities of practice that build meaningful partnerships and ensure emerging solutions have positive impact on children.
UN Tech Over Hackathon
JUNE 16 – 17, 2025 | NEW YORK (IN-PERSON)
As part of UN Open Source Week 2025, the Frontier Data Network is co-hosting the “Ahead of the Storm: Open Geospatial Analytics for Children-Centric Climate Emergency Response” hackathon in partnership with the Apache Software Foundation, Linux Professional Institute, and Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Participants will develop geospatial analytics tools that enable proactive, children-focused responses to climate emergencies, showcasing how collaborative innovation can accelerate progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
LATEST SPOTLIGHTS
Reaching the unreached with life-saving vaccines through data science and geospatial technologies
Each year, around 6 million children in West and Central Africa do not receive any lifesaving vaccines, making them ‘zero-dose children.’ These children often live in remote, inaccessible areas that traditional health systems struggle to reach. UNICEF’s Reach the Unreached (RtU) initiative is changing this by equipping countries with innovative datasets and actionable geospatial tools. Using frontier data techniques such as probability models and AI, the initiative produces geolocated vaccination estimates that helps health workers find and serve the children who need them most.
Harnessing AI to Transform Global Immunization Funding
The Global Immunization Budget Database (G-IBD) represents a major leap forward in supporting countries on their path to achieving sustainable financing for immunization programmes. By leveraging advanced AI, the G-IBD enhances the efficiency of tracking government immunization budgets, ensuring that financial resources are allocated effectively to close coverage gaps and sustain immunization services.
Harnessing Geospatial Technology for Early Childhood Development and Education in Zambia
The Frontier Data Network is collaborating with the Zambia Country Office on an innovative initiative to improve early childhood development and education. Using advanced geospatial technology and data analytics, the project identifies optimal locations for new early childhood education facilities, ensuring that vulnerable children have efficient and equitable access to essential education and health services.
MODERN DATA TECHNOLOGIES AT SCALE TO IMPROVE CHILDREN’S LIVES
We believe that modern data technologies can play a transformative role in addressing some of the most pressing challenges children face around the world. Yet today, a significant divide separates data-tech resources, advancements, expertise, and talent from the needs of the most vulnerable children and the systems that support them.
Our mission is to close this data-tech divide, enabling the responsible integration and development of cutting-edge technologies to improve children’s lives.
UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF DATA TECH FOR HUMANITARIAN AND DEVELOPMENT
To realize this vision, we are creating the conditions for data science innovation and long-term capacity building, accelerating the adoption of emerging technologies, research, and practices across the sector. We foster environments and communities where data-driven insights can drive transformative change in humanitarian and development efforts, ultimately leading to better outcomes for children in need.
OUR CORE PRINCIPLES
The Frontier Data Network’s community-building approach draws on the Center for Open Science’s Strategy for Culture Change, with its six guiding principles evolving from these foundational ideas. These principles are critical for developing frontier data technologies and ensuring that innovation leads to positive and sustainable impact.
BE INNOVATIVE
Explore, take risks, and think outside the box. Frontier data tech is still far from the needs of the most vulnerable. To bridge the gap, we need innovative practices, ecosystems, and mindsets.
RESEARCH-BACKED AND SCIENCE-BASED
Grounding our work in rigorous research and scientific principles to ensure effectiveness and reliability in all our technological applications and methodologies.
BE COLLABORATIVE
We can’t do this alone. Partnerships bring more than just resources. They bring different perspectives, capacities, and missions. Co-create and partner with governments, private sector, and academic institutions.
BUILD CAPACITY
Strengthen existing systems and develop local skills and resources. Innovation must be paired with growing institutional capacity, talent, and communities to leverage technologies effectively.
COMMUNITY-CENTRED
Practitioners as a force for change: Building, strengthening, and consolidating communities of practice to bridge data technologies with their real-world impact on the ground.
ETHICAL AND EQUITABLE
Prioritizing ethical and equity considerations to eliminate biases and inequalities in data tech practices, methods, and development, ensuring technology serves the most vulnerable.
“Without partnering with the private sector and academia, we cannot access and interpret that data, work with it, and connect it to the right policy decisions. That is what the FDN allows us to do.”
KITTY VAN DER HEIJDEN
Deputy Executive Director, Partnerships (DED), UNICEF
CHAMPIONED BY
COLLABORATORS
