A workflow for Sustainable Development Goals indicators assessment based on high-resolution satellite data

For evaluating the progresses towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs),a global indicator framework was developed by the UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals Indicators.In this paper,we propose an improved methodology and a set of workflows for calculating SDGs indicators.The main improvements consist of using moderate and high spatial resolution satellite data and state-of-the-art deep learning methodology for land cover classification and for assessing land productivity.Within the European Network for Observing our Changing Planet(ERA-PLANET),three SDGs indicators are calculated.In this research,harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 data are analyzed and used for land productivity analysis and yield assessment,as well as Landsat 8,Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 time series are utilized for crop mapping.We calculate for the whole territory of Ukraine SDG indicators:15.1.1–‘Forest area as proportion of total land area’;15.3.1–‘Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area’;and 2.4.1–‘Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture’.Workflows for calculating these indicators were implemented in a Virtual Laboratory Platform.We conclude that newly available high-resolution remote sensing products can significantly improve our capacity to assess several SDGs indicators through dedicated workflows.

Developing food,water and energy nexus workflows

There is a growing recognition of the interdependencies among the supply systems that rely upon food,water and energy.Billions of people lack safe and sufficient access to these systems,coupled with a rapidly growing global demand and increasing resource constraints.Modeling frameworks are considered one of the few means available to understand the complex interrelationships among the sectors,however development of nexus related frameworks has been limited.We describe three opensource models well known in their respective domains(i.e.TerrSysMP,WOFOST and SWAT)where components of each if combined could help decision-makers address the nexus issue.We propose as a first step the development of simple workflows utilizing essential variables and addressing components of the above-mentioned models which can act as building-blocks to be used ultimately in a comprehensive nexus model framework.The outputs of the workflows and the model framework are designed to address the SDGs.