Analysis-Ready Earth Observation Data and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

This paper reviews the key role that analysis- ready Earth observations (EO) play in achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in monitoring, measuring, and reporting on progress towards the associated targets and the Global Indicator Framework. In response to the enhanced demand for official and complementary data with a breadth of socioeconomic applications and new opportunities for how these data can be sourced, distributed and used, the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) has launched the Open Data Cube (ODC) initiative. This initiative seeks to increase the value and impact of global EO data by providing an open and freely accessible exploitation architecture, while fostering a community of cooperation that promotes EO data and related information usage and sharing for the benefit of society. The ODC initiative is working closely with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Earth Observations in Service of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (EO4SDG) initiative, whose primary purpose is to demonstrate and realize the potential of EO to support country-level implementation of the SDGs.