A Comprehensive Measurement of Progress toward Local SDGs with Geospatial Information: Methodology and Lessons Learned

Abstract

The UN’s 2030 Agenda defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to ensure the implementation of this global agenda, the UN proposed a systematic follow-up and review through indicator-based tracking and reporting of the progress with statistical and geospatial information toward SDGs at national, regional, and global levels. This has posed many technical and institutional challenges. Although international communities have devoted great attention to this hot topic, most of their work has focused on the conceptual design and preliminary testing. There are very few good practices for a comprehensive measurement and assessment of progress toward SDGs with the integration of statistical and geospatial information at national or local levels. This paper presents the methodology and results of a pioneer project which measured the progress toward SDGs at a local level in China (i.e., Deqing County) by integrating statistical and geospatial information. In this study, a number of technical/institutional issues have been tackled, such as the adoption of appropriate indicators at a local level, availability and acquisition of reliable data sets, and spatiotemporal analysis with a geographical perspective, interaction between SDGs and cross-sector coordination. The major conclusions are (a) the comprehensive progress toward SDGs in Deqing can be most appropriately measured and assessed by integrating geospatial and statistical information; (b) Deqing has made significant economic and social advances while maintaining a good ecological environment over the past few years. The results were released at the first United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress as a good practice and a live example to stimulate discussions.

Identification of urban land use efficiency by indicator-SDG 11.3.1

“…The county consists of 11 townships with a household registered population of 430,000. The land cover in Deqing is characterized by 50% mountains, 10% water, and 40% farmland, forming a livable place with mountain and water views [36]. Based on the statistics in 2006, the total land use area in Deqing County was 93,792.82 ha, with agricultural land, including cultivated land, garden land, forest land, and other agricultural land, accounting for 77.59%.…”

The Trends and Content of Research Related to the Sustainable Development Goals: A Systemic Review

“…As before, the UN made a strong statement on eradicating poverty in all associated research were also reviewed. Techniques such as geospatial information systems (GIS), remote sensing and multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) [44][45][46], conceptual issues such as carrying capacity, social innovation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) [47][48][49], and other comprehensive themes can be found in the literature.…”

Informing action for United Nations SDG target 8.7 and interdependent SDGs: Examining modern slavery from space

“…This is sorely needed to facilitate effective, efficient and evidence-based advancement towards SDG 8.7, and its intersecting SDGs. There is now a firm basis for rapid scale-up of this sort of work (Brown et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2020;Estoque, 2020;Jackson,). Future research should focus on fully understanding interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationships at play.…”