The rise of social-commerce has brought about robust changes to how we participate in our economy. The following indicators allow us to better quantify the ways in which how we shop and do business has transformed, and also help us project the additional growth that’s on the horizon. 

The first indicators focus on the growth of peer to peer (P2P) platforms. Social commerce technology and the sheer amount of time spent on social platforms has empowered P2P platforms to boom in recent years. The growth of specific platforms give us an idea of the public’s increasing comfort with and use of P2P platforms, while the projected growth of the peer to peer lending market size gives us an idea of how additional applications of the P2P exchanges and the sharing economy are prepared to take off. 

The next two indicators focus more broadly on the entire sharing economy, which has evolved from the concept of collaborative consumption. So far, the sharing economy has shown tremendous growth that is expected to continue and bring about further changes in consumption patterns, customer preferences and business models in the near future. 

Social media giants have gained immense popularity and play a significant role in facilitating these social commerce transactions. While we know a wide range of people use social media, breaking down platform’s users by gender provides further insight about who is engaging more with which platform and is thus exposed to or participating in various social-commerce related activities. 

The next indicator is the rate of adoption of social-commerce related technology. Technologies such as the mobile phone, internet and social media have become widely accessible to and used by the general public at rates comparable to or faster than more basic technologies like running water and electricity access, showing that the changes brought about by social commerce are happening an accelerated rate. 

The next indicator is the growth of fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 households in various countries from 2000 to 2018. The rise of personal access to high-speed internet indicates growth of and further potential for more people worldwide to engage in social-commerce transactions.

Lastly, the rise of online dating indicates how increasingly comfortable people are with engaging with others through online platforms, while also eluding to the versatility of applications of relevant social technologies. 

Trend

The number of people online, on mobile and on social has increased year-on-year. For companies who are optimizing their digital experiences across multiple channels, such as social media and e-commerce, are establishing a strong competitive advantage. Moreover, companies looking to move into social commerce should look at ways to build trust and create an online experience that demonstrates a clear value in browsing and buying online.

---

Revenue Growth of Peer to Peer Platforms

Kiva, Uber and Etsy have shown significant growth in revenue in recent years, while the market size of the peer to peer lending space is set to boom over the next several years.

---

Growth of the Sharing Economy

The growth volume of the sharing economy is projected to exceed 450 billion dollars by 2023. Similarly, the number of sharing economy users shown steady increases in recent years.

---

Platform Usage by Gender

Numerous social media platforms have become quite popular in the United States, but Facebook and Youtube have the most monthly active users. While some platforms are popular among both men and women, others appeal more to one gender.

---

Rates of Adoption by Technology

Technology such as mobile phones, the internet and social media have been widely adopted at rates comparable or faster than other technology main-stays.

---

Fixed Broadband Subscriptions

From 2000 to 2018 households around the world have gained access to highs-speed, personal internet access and thus, can engage in social commerce related activities.

---

Rise of Online Datin

The rise of online dating indicates increases in the comfort with and practice of engaging with others through online platforms.

Over the last five years, the promise of blockchain technology has swept the social impact world, with many innovators experimenting to find use cases for this uniquely secure technology. This has resulted in hundreds of new organizations, ventures, and initiatives focused on blockchain. We want to understand the ways in which blockchain can most effectively be used for social impact and the outlook of the blockchain technology.

Trend

Blockchain has been utilized in many different forms. It has been used as the foundation of clearing and settlement systems that are resistant to tampering and fraud. The technology is used for smart contracts, and found use in speeding up digital transactions as well. The wide array of apps and the rapid diversification of blockchain also heralds an opportunity for developers. With more firms gearing up to take advantage of blockchain, the demand for developers will start growing exponentially.

---

Area of Focus on Specific Blockchain Use Cases

Many people know blockchain because of its capabilities and potential when it comes to payments and transactions, however companies and users also focus on certain areas of blockchain involvements such as digital currency, data sharing, certification, and asset transfers. The changes within these particular sectors are also important to note as they can impact the direction of which blockchain may shift.

From this graphs you can see that from 2019 the focus on timestamping and tokenized securities hasn’t really been affected, but in the span of one year focus on data access/sharing and identity protection have both decreased by around 20% and keep in mind that this only happened in the span of one year so if this trend does continue this may lead to some unexpected consequences. However on the bright side, there seems to be an increasing shift in access to IP and certification, this means that companies and users are trying to shift to a more transparent method of transactions and further improving upon the security of blockchain. 

---

Distribution of Leading Cryptocurrencies

This graph presents the distribution of these cryptocurrencies from 2015 to 2020, by market share. The market capitalization of Bitcoin constituted 66% of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies in 2020. This figure decreased from 86 percent in 2015, in large part due to the rise of other cryptocurrencies.

---

Worldwide Spending on Blockchain

This graph presents the total worldwide spending on Blockchain. The data forecasts a steep increase in worldwide spending through 2023 and beyond. It also indicates that an exponentially increasing upward trend remains consistent in the years to come.

---

Blockchain Investments by Global Organizations

This graph depict’s organizations projected investments into Blockchain over the course of 2020. This shows the perceived importance of blockchain and can be used to predict future trends in investments.

Big Data is defined as “a field that treats ways to analyze, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software” in Wikipedia. It is one of most popular new technology in the Society.

---

Global Data Volume

The first indicator shows the growing volume in data creation and storage. It indicates the fast development in big data, and it also the foundation of the growth of following aspects.

The Volume of created data and that of big data storage in data center are increasing dramatically now. This trend is also predicted to continue growing in the future. The rapid growth of digitalization contributes to the big data times.

---

Hardware, Software, and Services

Big Data Market is divided in four fields: Hardware, Software, Services, and Cloud. The second, third, and fourth indicators show the impact of big data in those four aspects. The third indicator lists the specific effect of several companies and industries in revenue and workforce.

In Big data market, the revenue of all the Hardware, software, and service segments are increasing. Software occupy almost half of the total revenue in Big Data Market. For individual vendors, the revenue and employment amount change differently.

---

Impact on Companies and Industries

There is an obvious enhancement in software revenue, and a comparatively small increase in hardware revenue in Oracle in big data market. After relating big data revenue with the whole revenue and wordforce,  there might be a positive relationship between big data revenue and the number of employees in the company. However, the development of big data in Oracle do not have much influence on the whole revenue. The reason might be that other business focus has greater impact than big data hardware and software on Oracle total revenue.

The revenue of hardware increase and that of service decrease in DELL in Big Data Market from 2015 to 2017.  Dell Hardware revenue has similiar trend with the workforce and net revenue. This situation might remind the company to pay more attention to the big data Hardware business.

The service and software are two essential fragments consisting IBM Big Data Market. Nevertheless, there is not an obvious relationship between big data revenue and net revenue, neither the workforce. Maybe there is a correlation between IBM big data hardware revenue and total revenue of the company. Or, IBM should reconsider their business focus.

The revenue of big data market changed in opposite direction with the net revenue and workforce in HPE. With the more and more outstanding companies in the big data market, considering the core task of the whole company might be a serious problems.

Comparing the two graphs, Big Data Market revenue contribute a lot to the net revenue in AWS. This might be a great opportunity for AWS to improve its big data collecting and analyzing technology to follow the trend in the world. Besides, AWS could consider the method to balance the development in big data market and other new technology markets. It is easy to combine the graph below with information in “Technology Innovation” module.

Distinct industries are impacted by disparate levels. The statistic shows the leading industries based on their share of the global big data and analytics market in 2019. In that year, banking and manufacturing take a great percentage share of the revenue.

---

Cloud

Typically, the cloud service market is divided into three primary service models, encompassing infrastructure (IaaS), platforms (PaaS), and software (SaaS).  “Software as a Service” allows comsumers to easily processing the big data;  “Platforms as a Service” harness the big data and allowed it to be utilized in a variaty of ways; “Infrastructure as a Service” allows for a real-time processing of big data. In turn, big data promote cloud industry creating much more cloud-based applications. Then, fueling economic growth in cloud market.

Every vendor focused on different Cloud segments. This also explain the revenue alternation in hardware, software, and service for vendors. 

The share of installed cloud workloads shows that SaaS is the most popular segment in the cloud market. This might allow companies to consider their working focus in the cloud market.

Surveys in 2019 and 2020 indicated that governance, managing cloud spend, and security might be the greatest challenges. This remind developer of Cloud and Big data to notice the new target.

---

Online Advertising

The fifth indicator- online advertising- is a popular and useful application of big data. The improvement in big data help the online Advertising a lot.

Online advertising revenue in the United States grew by 15.9 percent in 2019 compared to 2018, and the revenue is expected to increase to 248.1 million dollars in 2023, owing to the emergence of data analytics application in new channels and formats. The statistic shows the success rate of various big data initiatives as of 2019, according to a survey of industry-leading firms, primarily in the United States. As of that time, 59.5 percent of respondents reported having seen measurable results from big data initiatives to decrease expenses.

---

Occupation Shift

The last indicator is the occupation shift. The technology boom of the last 20 years has generated more information than organizations know what to do with, and they need people to analyze the data and put it to use to make solid business decisions. Data analytics skill has become one of the most in-demand jobs worldwide, and it offers exciting career possibilities for college graduates to explore.

Data Analytics and Data Science Skills are one of the most in-demand skills in 2019 according to a survey by Greenbook. 96% of companies are planning or likely to plan to hire new permanent staff with relevant skills to fill future big data analytics related roles.

---

Economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence

The first KISS metric is the economic impact of artificial intelligence. According to McKinsey, Artificial intelligence has the potential to incrementally add 16 percent or around $13 trillion by 2030 to current global economic output – an annual average contribution to productivity growth of about 1.2 percent between now and 2030. We want to present the trend of the economic impact of AI so that we can have an idea what the future looks like.

Worldwide revenues from the artificial intelligence (AI) software market is forecast to increase from 2018 to 2025. North America is the largest regional market which also experiences the largest market growth, with revenues increasing from around four billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to more than 50 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Asia-Pacific and Europe are the other major regional players in the global AI software. AI technologies are being used in a variety of situations across consumer, enterprise, and government markets.

---

Artificial Intelligence Application

The second KISS Metric is Artificial Intelligence Application, we want to see the real-world application of AI and how it will benefit organizations and individuals.

The statistic shows the potential economic impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the GDP worldwide by industry sector in 2030. Artificial intelligence is forecast to enhance the gross domestic product of the energy, utilities and mining industry by 5.5 percent in terms of productivity.

---

IoT spending and device connections installed base

The third KISS metric is the IoT spending and device connections installed base. The “Internet of things” (IoT) is becoming an increasingly growing topic of conversation both in the workplace and outside of it. It’s a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live but also how we work. We want to see the worldwide IoT spending to better understand the future of IoT.

The total expenditure in the Internet of Thing(IoT) market is predicted to be more than 1,000 billion dollars in 2022. Besides, the total installed base of IoT connected devices is projected to amount to 21.5 billion units worldwide by 2025.

---

Global Growth in Revenue from IoT Verticals

The fourth KISS metric is Global Growth in Revenue from IoT Verticals. This goes along with the previous metric. On a broader scale, the IoT can be applied to things like transportation networks: “smart cities” which can help us reduce waste and improve efficiency for things such as energy use; this helping us understand and improve how we work and live.

With more people using IoT technology, the different verticals that make up IoT are forecast to increase in revenue over the next few years as following. This is also an great opportunity for device connection companies to earn high profits.

---

5G

The fifth KISS metric is 5G. We want to understand why 5G is important and how it’s changing the way the world connects and communicates.

According to reports, 5G will be 10 times faster than current LTE networks. This increase in speed will allow IoT devices to communicate and share data faster than ever. In the opposite direction of the impact, IoT technology development will press the improvement of 5G. Also, it will help increast the subscriptions of 5G.se, which has driven concerns from the environmental prospective.

---

Smart Home Worldwide

The last KISS Metric is smart home worldwide. The Revenue in the Smart Home market is projected to reach US$84,637m in 2020. We want to see the application of AI at households and the revenue it generates.

Smart home systems provide a variety of functions that can be managed remotely by a smartphone or computer. People use smart devices not only for entertainment, but also for security systems or automatic heating and lighting.

Ever increasing environmental demands are being placed on energy generation, which is leading to diversification of energy sources towards building a low carbon economy. This is driving interest in battery technology and alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, as well as increasing demands on improving traditional powers sources such as coal and nuclear.

---

Trend

Petroleum is the main source of energy in the United States. The liquid is predominantly utilized as a fuel in the transportation sector, which is also the second-largest consumer of energy in the US,  with a proportion of over 28 percent of the country’s total energy consumption. Investment in the transportation sector also increases given the growing consumption. South Korea, China, US and Germany are the four countries that have the highest level of energy storage method deployed.

Global Primary Energy Consumption by Source

The first KISS metric is global primary energy consumption by source. It is critical to understand energy consumption by source change with time so that we can understand the future of energy consumption.

Despite the prevalence of fossil fuels in the energy mix, the use of renewable energy sources has grown immensely in the last decade. Most of the renewable energy produced worldwide is derived from biomass, hydro and wind sources.

---

Global Primary Energy Consumption by Region

The second KISS metric is global primary energy consumption by region. As manufacturing centers are shifting toward Africa and South Asia, resulting in energy consumption growth in developing countries. It is interesting to see the relationship between energy-intensive manufacturing shifts and energy consumption worldwide.

Manufacturing centers are shifting toward Africa and South Asia, especially China and India, resulting in energy consumption growth.

---

Renewable Energy Investment

The third KISS metric is renewable energy investment. It emphasizes the opportunities for the energy system to attract the scale and types of investment that would align with a more secure and sustainable energy system.

Investment flows today determine where electricity comes from tomorrow. Increasingly, the money is flowing to renewable energy technologies. In 2019, the world financed $282 billion of renewable capacity, with onshore and offshore wind leading the way at $138 billion followed by solar at $131 billion. The success is attributable to maturing technologies and falling costs.

---

Energy use vs. GDP per Capita

The fourth KISS metric is energy use versus GDP per capita. Access to energy is a key pillar for human well being, economic development and poverty alleviation. Balancing the challenge between development and environment therefore provides us with an ultimate goal of ensuring everyone has access to enough sustainable energy to maintain a high standard of living.

The log model depicts the relationship between energy use and GDP per Capita. The positive relationship is clearly shown in developing countries.

---

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Due To Energy Consumption

The fifth KISS metric is the greenhouse gas emissions due to energy consumption. Historical and current energy systems are dominated by fossil fuels which produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – the fundamental driver of global climate change. If we are to meet our global climate targets and avoid dangerous climate change, the world needs a significant and concerted transition in its energy sources. That’s why we picked green house gas emissions as an important indicator.

As people become more environmentally aware, the trade-off between GDP growth and carbon dioxide emissions occurs. Most energy-intensive manufacturing shifts to non-OECD Asia. The carbon dioxide emissions in non-OECD Asia continue to increase, which has driven concerns from the environmental prospective.

---

Electric Vehicle Sales

The last KISS metric is electric vehicle sales. As technological progress advances and the market for them grows, electric vehicles are expanding significantly. This goes along with the previous metric – greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, indications of a continuing shift from direct subsidies to policy approaches that rely more on regulatory and other structural measures – including zero-emission vehicles mandates and fuel economy standards. The expansion of EV sharing systems also indicates that the transition in vechicle consumption will elevate in the future.

Deloitte estimated that EVs will represent 10% of the total automotive market share by 2024. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports rapid growth in electric car deployment, particularly in China. The IEA forecasts thatEV stock would reach more than 250 million, reducing oil demand by an estimated 4.3 million barrels per day (mb/d).

Climate Change has a great impact on the eco-environment, which potentially affect people’s life and industrial behaviors. It is dependent on the choice of future economic and social development pathways. To be more specific, social development can be a strong determinant of vulnerability to climate change and vice versa. Most impacts of climate change cannot be avoided over the next few decades. The following indicators remind governments and companies the hidden danger of geographic change and production.

Trend

Global climate is changing and this change is apparent across a wide range of observations. The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities. Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond. The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few decades depends primarily on the amount of heat-trapping gases emitted globally, and how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to those emissions. Meanwhile, billion dollar events resulted in the deaths of 188 people in 2020 so far and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted.

---

Green House Gas Emission (GHG Emission)

In some content, five indicators are connected to each other. The first variable is the base of climate change. All the following changes are driven by the green house gas emission. Global Warming, which caused by the GHG emission, is also one of the most obvious and serious phenomenon in the society. Industries should reconsider the production target and environmental protection standard by linking to the renewable energy. Also, the governments might alter or attach more importance to the gas emission restriction.

Green house gas emissions are fundamental element of climate change. In all green house gases, carbon dioxide has great impact on our environment and even people’s life. The carbon dioxide emission has an increasing trend in recent years, which partially causes the rising temperature and global warming. In these graphs, different areas and sources contribute to the carbon dioxide emission in considerable levels.

Find more statistics at Statista

Increasing CO2 amount influence the frequency and fluctuation of anomalies in land and ocean temperature. The following graph shows the difference from an average temperature, which indicates a growing trend in the past 100 years globally.

CO2 emission create great impact on the voluntary carbon offset markets. This voluntary market has prompted project developers to create technological innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

---

Rising Sea Level

Climate Change impact is mainly divided in two aspects- rising temperature and unstable rainfall. The second indicator – rising sea level- reflects the effect of temperature ascent. The result suggests the international communities to seriously consider the implications of sea level rising for the population location and infrastructure planning, and encourage coastal governments to plan to adaptation as soon as possible.

Sea level rising is a serious global threat nowadays. According to the World Bank, scientific evidence shows that due to the global warming, sea level will rise between 1 to 3 meters in this century. Here is the trend of mean sea level change worldwide from 5 database, and the sea height variation from NASA.

However, both the size of Arctic sea ice and Antarctica ice sheets continuously decreasing nowadays. Because of the unexpectedly rapid breakup of Ice Sheets, the sea level might meet a 5 meters rise.

5 scenarios are established to analyze impact of rising sea level. They are 1 to 5 meters increase in the height of sea level. And those 5 scenarios are analyzed in 84 developing countries.

Population and land face high danger of being replaced and submerged as sea level rising.

Besides, since continuously rising sea level will spark off many weather catastrophe, such as flood, the economic damage will become severe in the future if more and more ice sheets melt.

---

Water Stress

The Fourth indicator – water stress- reflects the effect of unstable rainfall. The water variability will has negative influence on domesticity, agriculture, and industry if people do not begin to notice the problem.

One of the main global differences in human health and food production stems from the geographical distribution of water availability. Over the decades, water availability has changed regionally, with apparent indications of stress in southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. If these projected levels of water stress should continue the domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors of these regions will be severely affected and lead to a possible decrease in development and growth.

These graphs show the average exposure of water users in each country to water stress, which essentially refers to the ratio of total withdrawals to total renewable supply in a given area. A darker shade means that more water users are competing for limited supplies.

---

Deforestation

The Third indicator – deforestation- partially lead to the increasing seriousness of global warming and unstable rainfall. This indicator generally remind the paper and box industry, who focus on deforestation for production, to constrain their target amount. It also encourage the development of renewable energy and energy production.

Deforestation is a serious problem in the past, and it has gained the control in the recent years. But, the forest areas are still decreasing now. 

Nevertheless, the production capacity of paper, paperboard, and boxboard industry is increasing now, which might leads to heavy deforestation. Consequently, those markets might face the problem of missing resource in the future. Thus, those industries should began to consider alternative ways of developing their product, such as excavating useful and renewable resource.

With heavy deforestation in the world, the renewable energy and its renewability will shrink. This might have a deep relationship with the Energy topic. Also, the rainfall will be affected by the deforestation especially in the tropical area. This might related to the water stress.

---

Natural Disasters

The final indicator- natural disaster- correlates to all indicators above. The more and more intense natural events, most importantly, increase economic damages.

Floods, landslides, and all other extreme weather events that can have large impacts, are likely to become more frequent and widespread in the future and, in some cases, more intense. In general, the related impacts are expected to be broadly negative, including reduced water availability, damage to crops and most importantly, an exponential increase in economic damages.

“The world is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate, and more than half the world’s population live in cities” (World Bank 2018). This Societal Shift explores the pace by which large numbers of people concentrate in relatively small areas. It is expected that by 2050, two-thirds of the world will live in urban areas (UN 2015). Indeed, rapid urbanization is happening and thus, it is imperative to learn where is this growth occurring and what key indicators help us foresee the cities of the future.

Trend

More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Due to the ongoing urbanisation and growth of the world’s population, there will be about 2.5 billion more people added to the urban population by 2050, mainly in Africa and Asia. The world’s urban areas are highly varied, but many cities and towns are facing problems such as a lack of jobs, homelessness and expanding squatter settlements, inadequate services and infrastructure, poor health and educational services and high levels of pollution.

---

The largest 20 cities in 2035

Ongoing rapid urbanization has the potential to improve people’s wellbeing and it is important to learn that Asia will lead in number of megacities by 2035:

---

Percentage of population living in urban areas

Rapid urbanization is not only happening in Asia. It is taking place everywhere in the world at a similar pace! For example, by 2050, urbanization will reach 90% in South America. The following chart allows for comparison among the world’s continents:

---

Population density in the US

Population density is a measurement of population per unit area and it is a key geographical term. While the US does not rank within the top 50 countries for this indicator, it is important to note that cities such as New Jersey and Rhode Island have 1,208 and 1,025 inhabitants per square mile, respectively. The next graph shows the rate of growth for population density in the United States:

---

Population of Beijing, China

Beijing is the 11th largest city in the world and its population will reach over 25 million people by 2035:

---

People employed in agriculture

While agriculture is the second greatest source of employment worldwide, the share of the population in this industry is declining. This indicator helps identify that as countries develop, agriculture employment declines. Most importantly, it can help us understand the pace in which people migrate from rural to urban areas.

The demographics of countries have dramatically changed in recent years. It is mainly reflected in the population composition and indicators such as birth/death rate and life expectancy. The changing demographics have a great effect and impact the society in different ways that alter how a business should adjust their target market. The following indicators allow us to quantify these demographic shifts.

The first indicators focus on the United States population. Statistics that help to identify the composition of the population are very important in visualizing how society is changing in terms of a few metrics. These important metrics include number of persons in each age demographic over the past 50+ years and what direction change is occurring. The next is immigration patterns in various possible scenarios that exemplify how population growth could be dependent on immigration. Lastly, within this idea of immigration bolstering the growing U.S. population is the number of documented permanent residents in the United States.

The next indicator is life conditions, which allow researchers and businesses to understand the lifespan and conditions of their market. The first metric under this indicator is the United States birth rate, which helps visualize the ease of childbirth and the increasing safety over the past years. Lastly, the average life expectancy is of utmost importance to understand the average human lifespan and adapt business plans around longer, healthier lives.

---

Trend

The aging population is rapidly increasing due to declining fertility rates world wide, which in turn reduces the number of available workers. Advances in medical technologies, and in particular the spectacular decline in the cost and time required to map the human genome holds the promise of further dramatic increases in life expectancy, and in particular, the prospect of staying healthier and more active in later life.

U.S. Population Age Composition by Year

The age composition of a population is a fundamental element of demographics. In all populations, the representation of different age groups influences businesses. The age composition of the United States has shown an increase in elderly persons over the past 50+ years. In the graph below, this trend can be seen in relation to other age demographic trends.

---

U.S. Population Forecast with Immigration Scenarios

Fluctuating immigration rates into the United States influences the overall population trend. The following graph shows the difference between the United States population in following years under different immigration circumstances.

---

Number of Documented Permanent Residents over Time

Fluctuating immigration rates into the United States influences the overall population trend. The following graph shows the number of documented permanent residents over time and the general increase over the past 40 years.

---

U.S. Birth Rate

The birth rate of a country can be used to forecast the impending generational trends and the situation of adults in the age group of new-parents. This information can also be used to predict the increasing safety of child birth and pregnancy trends in the United States. The below graph shows a recent spike, then forecasted plateau of birth rate in the U.S.

---

U.S. Life Expectancy

Average life expectancy in a country reflects the overall conditions of living and health. Over the past hundred years, the life expectancy has increased greatly. This graphs shows this data to utilize in forecasting the upward trajectory of this trend.