Never in the history of humankind has so much data been available; from research and surveillance data to crowd-sourced and citizen data, a staggering and growing number of digital datasets are

available, often free online.

But according to World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) research leader Dr Keith Shepherd, for this surfeit of data to serve sustainable development, robotic data mining to will not do; the data must be translated—using decision science—into useful knowledge that helps guide decision making, from the farm to policy-making levels.

Decision science can also be used to decide what type and how much data to collect to answer particular questions, thus saving time and resources. Read more. .