In 2015, the international United Nations organization achieved a major milestone by establishing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
All nations have agreed upon 17 goals, each with dozens of indicators for reporting and evaluating progress on each goal. Each nation is committing to generating data, maps, and analytic reports on each goal.
GIS computing has grown significantly in the past decade and has changed radically. The GIS and Geospatial communities are entering a new era where GIS is coming to life and connecting all of our individual GIS’s on the web.The resulting Web GIS is becoming more social and community-oriented.
The 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 goals with over 230 indicators is perhaps the most bold and ambitious community project that can be enabled by GIS.
The General Assembly endorses the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled “The future we want” (For more info: FutureWeWant).
The Future We Want in paragraph 274 recognizes “the importance of space-technology-based data, in situ monitoring, and reliable geospatial information for sustainable development policy-making, programming and project operations. In this context, we note the relevance of global mapping and recognize the efforts in developing global environmental observing systems, including by the Eye on Earth network and through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. We recognize the need to support developing countries in their efforts to collect environmental data”.
The Future We Want in paragraph 187 also recognizes “the importance of comprehensive hazard and risk assessments, and knowledge and information sharing, including reliable geospatial information. We commit to undertake and strengthen in a timely manner risk assessment and disaster risk reduction instruments”.
The 2030 agenda is an extraordinary project. Each of us should make the Agenda’s goals their own and act with responsibility.
Working together, we can apply GIS technology to realize this incredibly ambitious project!
What future do you want? Do you think GIS technology is useful?
