ANALYSIS-READY EARTH OBSERVATION DATA AND THE UNITED NATIONS
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Argyro Kavvada and Alex Held
Booz Allen Hamilton, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters,
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.,
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Centre of Earth Observation,
Canberra, Australia
ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the key role that analysis- ready Earth
observations (EO) play in achieving the United Nations (UN)
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in monitoring,
measuring, and reporting on progress towards the associated
targets and the Global Indicator Framework. In response to
the enhanced demand for official and complementary data
with a breadth of socioeconomic applications and new
opportunities for how these data can be sourced, distributed
and used, the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
(CEOS) has launched the Open Data Cube (ODC) initiative.
This initiative seeks to increase the value and impact of global
EO data by providing an open and freely accessible
exploitation architecture, while fostering a community of
cooperation that promotes EO data and related information
usage and sharing for the benefit of society. The ODC
initiative is working closely with the Group on Earth
Observations (GEO) Earth Observations in Service of the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (EO4SDG)
initiative, whose primary purpose is to demonstrate and
realize the potential of EO to support country-level
implementation of the SDGs.
1. INTRODUCTION
The EO4SDG initiative organizes the potential of EO and
geospatial information to advance the 2030 Agenda and
enable societal benefits through achievement of the SDGs.
In particular, the initiative aims to advance a portfolio of
national pilot projects focused on integrating EO with
national statistics to better measure, monitor and achieve the
SDGs. Supplemental implementation mechanisms include
capacity building activities to help provide support to
institutions and individuals in the use of EO methods and
data to achieve the SDGs; development and dissemination
of data and information products to advance the provision,
access, and applicability of EO for use with the SDGs; and
outreach and engagement activities to promote the
consideration and adoption of EO for the SDGs by nations
and stakeholders. In collaboration with CEOS and the
978-1-5386-7150-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
(GPSDD), EO4SDG is exploring the applicability of
country-level, and regional, data cubes - time series
multidimensional (space, time, data type) stack of spatially
aligned pixel ready for analysis - to improve data access,
preparation, and analysis of satellite EO data, and address
local and national needs, including respective SDG targets
and indicators.
EO4SDG is particularly focused on building the capacity of
key users, including Government Ministries, National
Statistical Agencies, Geographic and Research Institutes,
among other relevant stakeholders, to integrate EO and
geospatial information with national statistics and other
traditional, data sources to measure progress towards
sustainable development. National or regional-level data
cube infrastructures can help reduce the burden of data
management and preparation, and allow for immediate
analysis and faster methodological development without
further user effort.
There are already several valuable examples of existing data
cube infrastructures including the Australian, Colombian,
and Swiss national Data Cubes. Further, CEOS, GEO, and
the GPSDD are now exploring the development and
deployment of a regional African Data Cube that will aim to
support several countries in the central African region,
including Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana and
Tanzania. If successful, this regional data cube effort will
allow countries to better assess their local resources, and
monitor indicators of common interest for sustainable
development and positive socioeconomic impact, including
agricultural productivity, land use and land change, water
quality and availability, coastal eutrophication, among
others.
2. EO DATA AND OFFICIAL STATISTICS
EO provide a substantial contribution to achieving the SDGs
by enabling informed decision-making and monitoring the
expected results. Furthermore, observations and EO-based
methods are portable, and can easily be scaled to sub-national
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as well as regional and global levels. Figure 1 demonstrates
some examples of SDG targets and indicators that are directly
relevant to EO (Anderson et al., 2017).
Figure 1. Examples of SDG Targets and Indicators that can
be informed by EO.
EO data can add context and provide linkages to any set of
statistics by means of:
- Scale: EO can provide data on multiple scales, from
local to national, regional, and global.
- Reduced Cost: Due to the increasing open and free
data access policies, satellite and in-situ EO data are
becoming more broadly accessible and can reduce
costs associated with traditional methods (i.e.,
surveys).
- Long time series and continuity: The continuous
acquisition of data by satellites systematically
produces real-time data.
- Consistency and comparability: Satellites provide
means for the effective comparison of results
between neighboring as well as remote countries
and regions.
- Creating new solutions: While national statistical
data are often used to mark progress towards
sustainable systems, EO data can also be used to
further stimulate progress (for example, EO data can
help identify environments that can produce food at
a higher capacity for the global population) (James,
I. & Kavvada, A., 2017).
3. DATA CUBES AND THE SDGS
An open data cube approach can allow national
governments, regional institutions and other relevant
stakeholders to measure progress towards achieving national
priorities, as these align to the SDG targets and indicators, via
free and open, analysis ready satellite data and application
algorithms. Such efficient, analysis-ready data production
methods can help scale the use of SDG-specific products, and
facilitate the sharing of knowledge and lessons learned from
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country-to-country and region-to-region, while enabling
comparability across different users. Further, data
interoperability approaches allow for a combined use of
different measurement types and spatial resolutions, enabling
the integration of multiple analysis-ready EO products with
official statistics and other data sources such as surveys,
collection of samples, etc. for the SDGs. EO data can also
help obtain more accurate, frequent, and spatially or
temporally extrapolated measurements, complementing
country-collected data and SDG monitoring efforts.
4. CONCLUSIONS
GEO and CEOS envision a world, well in advance of 2030,
in which uses of EO data to support progress on the SDGs are
valuable, routine and customary. Realizing this vision
requires that:
- the global community is aware of, and has timely
access to, effective ways to use EO and geospatial
information relative to the SDGs;
- countries and stakeholders have developed the skills
and capabilities necessary to apply the data and
information for effective SDG monitoring and
reporting;
- EO provide real, value-added benefits and are
recognized for their contributions to support the
social, economic and environmental aspects of the
2030 Agenda; and
- there is demonstrated progress on the Goals and
broad desire to achieve these, and more.
Many key users of relevance to SDG monitoring and
implementation lack the expertise to efficiently and
effectively access, process, and analyze the growing
volume of EO data for local, regional, and national decision-
making. Infrastructure and internet bandwidth are
supplemental issues that can impede the full access, usage
and analysis of EO data for sustainable development,
particularly in the developing world. It is therefore essential
for the EO community to develop and deploy data tools and
technologies to enable the enhanced impact of EO data, and
foster a community to develop, sustain, and enhance the
breadth and depth of EO applications with benefits to society.
5. REFERENCES
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“Earth observation in service of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development,” Geo-spatial Information Science, 1-20
[2] James, I., Kavvada, A., “Zero Hunger: A Primer on Sustainable
Development Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and
improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”,
http://eo4sdg.org
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