Translation of Earth observation data into sustainable development indicators: An analytical framework

Abstract In 2015, member countries of the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals at the Sustainable Development Summit in New York. These global goals have 169 targets and 232 indicators that are based on the three pillars of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental. Substantial challenges remain in obtaining data of the required quality, especially in developing countries, given the often limited resources available. One promising and innovative way of addressing this issue of data availability is to use Earth observation (EO). This paper presents the results of research to develop a novel analytical framework for assessing the potential of EO approaches to populate the SDG indicators. We present a Maturity Matrix Framework and apply it to all of the 232 SDG indicators. The results demonstrate that although the applicability of EO‐derived data do vary between the Sustainable Development Goal indicators, overall, EO has an important contribution to make towards populating a wide diversity of the Sustainable Development Goals indicators.