Assess the current and potential contribution of EO to the SDG Targets and Indicators (through the lenses of space-based EO) and identify areas of better EO uptake, with the objective to increase the effective use of satellite observations and products in the overall SDGs processes (targets achievement and indicators? monitoring) and by all key players (global to local)
The compendium on the EO contribution to the SDG indicators is made of 2 documents.
1. a detailed compendium with Indicator Fact Sheets (including short EO methodological guidelines)
2. a companion policy brief for decision makers.
The Compendium is a technical document of 200+ pages for countries to better understand the value of EO for monitoring and reporting on the SDG indicators. It is made of an introduction on the importance of EO for the SDGs, followed by individual "indicator fact sheets" in a standard format which follows the official SDG metadata description to be easily understood by countries. It was produced by assessing the relevance of EO according to different criteria (EO maturity, technical capacity required, availability of global data sets, compliance with SDG reporting calendar, sensitivity to changes, scalability, gaps filling). For each of these criteria a colour rating was used, which was then converted in 2 lists of indicators: the green indicators (SDG Indicators for which EO have been identified as a major source of information) and the amber indicators (SDG Indicators for which EO could potentially contribute). EO has been identified as a main source of information for 17 “green”indicators and as a potential contribution for another set of 17 “amber”indicators.
The individual factsheets of the compendium have been reviewed by EO experts (2 reviewers per indicator). The EO experts also helped to collect best practice examples to illustrate the added value of EO to the indicator implementation. The introduction to the compendium was also reviewed by a number of SDG stakeholders including the co-leads of GEO EO4SDG and CEOS Ad-Hoc Team on SDGs. The list of reviewers (introduction and fact sheets) are indicated in the acknowledgement on page 2 of the compendium.
A policy brief with the major findings has also been produced for policy makers.
The documents were distributed to the leads of GEO EO4SDG and CEOS Ad-hoc Team on SDGs in July 2019, and to the members of the CEOS Ad-Hoc on SDGs in September 2019, ahead of the CEOS SIT Technical Workshop in Fairbanks, The members of the CEOS and GEO groups on SDGs have been invited to review and comment the 2 documents .
ESA on behalf of the CEOS SDG-AHT will manage amendments to the documents, which will result from the on-going CEOS and GEO reviewers. Only minor comments (corrections of error/fact, and increased clarity of meaning/language) will be handled through editorial changes. Any other changes relating to content which require in depth responses to comments (i.e. new research/reading), redrafting more than a sentence or compiling a review log with responses will be done in the framework of the GEO EO4SDG intiative.
The way forward is now to implement an on-line version of the compendium on the GEO EO4SDG website and start improving the compendium in form and content, with the inputs from the GEO and CEOS community (those requesting substantial changes to the compendium).
These 2 documents (Compendium and Policy Brief) will be considered as a joint GEO/CEOS contribution to the IAEG-SDGs WGGI Task Stream II task 1 (Develop expert advice and guidance to IAEG-SDGs and the larger statistical community).
The 2 documents are available on the CEOS Document Management Portal.
The action can be considered closed.