Data Products & Innovations

From fragmented data to decision-ready evidence 

Working with partners, SEBI-Livestock transforms hard-to-access information into trusted, decision-ready evidence for the livestock and aquaculture sectors. We operate at the intersection of rigorous data science and practical application, ensuring that every product we build is fit for purpose.

The challenge: disconnected sources

Decision-makers we work with often face a barrier: critical data is scattered across private project reports, public censuses, and unstructured grey literature. These datasets rarely "talk" to each other naturally. Without intervention, valuable insights remain trapped in PDF files or incompatible formats, leaving decision-makers with an incomplete picture.

Our approach: the data pipeline 

We bridge these gaps through a deliberate pipeline of Ingestion, Processing, and Analytics.

1. Ingest: We bring together structured data (such as Gates Foundation Grantee Investment Data and global open databases) and unstructured data (including peer-reviewed literature and investment reports).
2. Process (Find, Extract, Consolidate): This is where we make data talk to each other and the next phase of our work is about making data ‘Artificial-Intelligence (AI) ready'. We harmonise data from disparate sources, integrate them into a cohesive whole, and describe them rigorously.
3. Analyse: The output is high-quality data ready for analytics, powering our interactive dashboards and models.

Innovation in action 

We actively collaborate with partners at the University of Edinburgh to deploy AI tools that expand the breadth of data we can use. Our innovations target specific bottlenecks in the pipeline:

• Discovery: Using AI to discover, extract, and consolidate hard-to-reach data including investment outcomes, national livestock metrics and price data. 
• Consolidation: We will be evaluating tools to synthesise trends and enable conversational analytics.
• Gap Filling: When our quality checks identify missing critical context, we are exploring AI methods to help fill these data gaps, ensuring decision-makers have the complete evidence they need.

Grounded in user needs 

Our work is grounded in the real questions posed by funders and stakeholders, such as identifying sector bottlenecks. By automating the search and synthesis of information, we free up experts to spend less time hunting for data and more time analysing results, capturing learnings and improving decisions.

Testing, learning, improving 

Innovation rarely moves in a straight line. We are deliberate about how we share progress, clarifying the output at each stage—whether it is an internal prototype, a refined method, or a mature tool ready for external use. By sharing work in progress and lessons learned, we maintain transparency about our iteration and timelines. This approach allows us to evaluate AI tools for reliability and fit, designing pipelines that are responsible by default and always prioritising security, fairness, and transparency.

Transparency and quality 

Our goal is to provide more of the right data, sooner. Our dashboards clearly indicate data quantity (from "Good" to "Sparse"), ensuring users understand the confidence levels of the evidence. Where possible, we will share the outputs on our website through data downloads or dashboards. Whether you are a funder tracking impact or a researcher exploring new technologies, SEBI-L ensures that data serves as a reliable foundation for better decisions in the livestock sector.

Powering the wider programme 

Our data work is the engine for SEBI-L's broader mission. The structured evidence we generate directly enables our other Areas of Work:

• Monitoring & Learning: Providing the collated investment and national data needed to track sector progress.
• Evidence Synthesis & Modelling: Supplying the rigorous, harmonised datasets required for modelling and policy insights.
• Gender Integration & Insights: Ensuring our data infrastructure supports the use of gender-disaggregated data, to identify gaps in equitable systems.
• LD4D Network: Where possible, making our data tools and insights available to the global livestock community to help inform decisions and address evidence challenges.