During the 41st edition of the BDA Conference, held at IRIT Toulouse in October 2025, Wissal Benjira, PhD student and ESILV alumni, received the Best Demo Award for her research work on computing Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators using open data.
This recognition highlights the contribution of young researchers trained at ESILV to the international data science community and to the advancement of sustainable data management.
BDA 2025: A significant event for the data management community
The 41st edition of the Bases de Données – Principes, Technologies et Applications (BDA) Conference brought together academics, researchers, and industry professionals to discuss recent advances in database technologies, big data, and knowledge systems.
Hosted by the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), this annual event serves as a key meeting point for the French-speaking data community, fostering exchanges between academia and industry on emerging data management practices.
ESILV’s research: Recognising innovative research on SDG indicators
Wissal Benjira’s demonstration, titled “SDG-KG: A Framework to Compute SDG Indicators with Open Data”, addresses one of the key challenges in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: integrating heterogeneous open data sources to monitor indicators efficiently and reliably.
Her framework, SDG-KG, proposes a spatio-temporal knowledge graph that structures metadata, guides data retrieval, and formalises workflows for indicator computation. It leverages graph-based modelling to build a Metadata Graph, resolve data conflicts, and dynamically generate query-driven execution plans.
Through an interactive interface, users can explore UN specifications, inspect data provenance, and visualise computed indicators.
The tool thus bridges open data and actionable insights, supporting transparent, data-driven decision-making in sustainability policies.
Nicolas Travers, deputy director of the DVRC lab at ESILV, received the award.
A bridge between academia and real-world applications
BDA 2025 provided an opportunity to showcase research that links technological innovation to societal impact.
Wissal’s work reflects the growing role of data science and artificial intelligence in addressing global challenges such as sustainability and resource management.
Her contribution demonstrates how advanced data modelling techniques, developed within academic research frameworks, can support institutions and policymakers in measuring and tracking progress toward the SDGs.
“Honoured to receive this award! Many thanks for your mentorship and support, Nicolas Travers,” shared Wissal Benjira, acknowledging the guidance of her PhD supervisor and Deputy Director of the DVRC lab at ESILV, as well as the collaborative environment that supported her research journey.
At ESILV, research strategy is structured around four main development objectives: scientific excellence, societal impact of research, interdisciplinarity, and internationalisation.
Learn more about ESILV’s research strategy
This post was last modified on 4 November 2025 3:11 pm