Remote sensing and geospatial technologies for sustainable development: A review of applications

Abstract

Sustainability requires equilibrium in the use of resources. The United Nations launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to overcome the world’s challenges, including poverty, inequality, and the effects of climate change. Remote sensing (RS) and geospatial technologies have a high potential in monitoring these SDG indicators. In this paper, we briefly introduce these geospatial technologies and their applications to monitoring SDGs along with opportunities and challenges in the current context. RS shows much advancement with new satellites with improved capabilities and whose limitations have been overcome by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The latest advances have been found in mapping and monitoring various resources, and understanding their relationship with sustainability. New opportunities to adopt emerging technologies with multisource data have been highlighted along with challenges in handling data and manpower. In addition to these, developing countries face challenges in awareness, training, and lack of budget to adopt these technologies, which hinder sustainability in areas that need them the most. In this paper, we provide a brief update to disseminate the latest advances in RS and geospatial technologies for monitoring SDGs and thus raising awareness about their potential applications.