Search

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) suffer from a lack of national data needed for effective monitoring and implementation. Almost half of the SDG indicators are not regularly produced, and available datasets are often out-of-date. New monitoring approaches using big data are advancing rapidly and can complement official statistics to help fill critical data gaps. However, there is poor information-sharing on the latest innovations and research collaborations across different thematic areas, and limited evaluation of strengths and weaknesses for supporting national monitoring. This paper provides a systematic review of the academic literature over the past 5 years relating to the use of big data to support monitoring of the SDGs. It reviews the state-of-the-art research using big data and advanced analytics to produce new datasets, the alignment of these datasets with the official SDG indicators, the main types and sources of big data used, and the analytical methods applied. We developed a set of evaluation criteria and applied it to highlight some of the strengths and limitations of these datasets derived from big data. We find that recent research has developed a considerable range of new datasets that could contribute to monitoring 15 goals, 51 targets, and 69 indicators. Dominant focal areas of research include land and biodiversity, health, water, cities and settlements, and poverty. Satellite and Earth Observation data were the primary sources used, most commonly applied with machine learning methods and cloud computing. However, several challenges remain, including ensuring the relevance of new datasets for monitoring SDG indicators, cost and accessibility considerations, sustainability aspects, and linking global datasets to nationally owned monitoring processes.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) combine complex interlinkages, future uncertainty and transformational change. Recent studies highlight that trade-offs between SDG targets may undermine achievement of the goals. Significant gaps remain in scenario frameworks and modelling capabilities. We develop a novel approach nesting national SDG scenario modelling within the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, selecting Australia as a use case. The integrated SDG–Australia model is used to project four alternative scenarios that adopt different development approaches. Although we find that Australia is off-track to achieve the SDGs by 2030, considerable progress is possible by altering Australia’s development trajectory. A ‘Sustainability Transition’ scenario comprising a coherent set of policies and investments delivers rapid and balanced progress of 70% towards SDG targets by 2030, well ahead of the business-as-usual scenario (40%). A focus on economic growth, social inclusion or green economy in isolation foregoes opportunities for greater gains. However, future uncertainty and cascading risks could undermine progress, and closing the gap to 100% SDG achievement will be very challenging. This will require a shift from ‘transition’ to ‘transformation’. A simulation nesting global and Australian scenarios on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals finds that working on all goals jointly has added benefits. In the path to achieve the goals, the last stages will be the most challenging.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive and integrated framework of targets and indicators to support national planning and reporting through until 2030. Interest in the SDGs is growing, as seen by the emergence of a range of data-driven assessments of progress, gaps and opportunities for achieving the SDGs. Despite this growing momentum, few national governments have completed their own evidence-based assessment of progress. This paper explores the method and results from an independent, evidence-based assessment of Australia’s progress towards the SDGs. The assessment evaluates Australia’s progress across 86 SDG targets and 144 corresponding indicators which were selected through an expert-driven, consultative process. The study uses a novel approach combining several contemporary methods to produce a comprehensive assessment of national progress on the SDGs. The results show that Australia has mixed performance on the SDGs, with strong progress in goals relating to health and education undermined by poor progress in goals relating to climate action and reducing inequalities. By comparing our results against other recent assessments of Australia’s progress, we observe that SDG assessment results are highly sensitive to the selection of indicators and assessment methods. Our assessment addresses these sensitivities by maintaining the integrity of the SDG framework and a clear linkage to official targets and indicators, while also having regard for national priorities and relevance. The study provides a timely contribution to research in the emerging field of evidence-based assessments of national progress on the SDGs.

Cities are recognised as central to determining the sustainability of human development. However, assessment concepts that are able to ascertain whether or not a city is sustainable are only just emerging. Here we review literature since the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were agreed in 2015 and identify three strands of scientific inquiry and practice in assessing city sustainability. We find that further integration is needed. SDG monitoring and assessment of cities should take advantage of both consumption-based (footprint) accounting and benchmarking against planetary boundaries and social thresholds in order to achieve greater relevance for designing sustainable cities and urban lifestyles., Whether or not a city achieves absolute sustainability is difficult to assess with existing frameworks. Here the authors, in a review, show that a further integration of consumption-based accounting and benchmarking is necessary to aid the monitoring and assessment of Sustainable Development Goals in cities.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) provide an integrated, evidence-based framework of targets and indicators to support national planning and reporting. For countries to begin implementation of the SDGs, it is critical to build the evidence base for action. The integrated nature of the SDG targets mean that progress towards one target is also linked through complex feedbacks to other targets, placing demands on science and research to support national implementation. A range of different tools and approaches are recommended by experts, and an emerging challenge is to coherently apply and combine these different approaches to support decision-making. This study makes a significant contribution to filling this knowledge gap, adopting a novel integrated assessment approach to support the prioritisation of SDG targets through a case study for 22 countries in the Arab region. The research adopts a multi-criteria analysis decision framework which assesses and prioritises SDG targets based upon their ‘level of urgency’, ‘systemic impact’, and ‘policy gap’. A range of complementary evidence- and science-based approaches are applied within the assessment framework, including baseline assessment and benchmarking of indicators, systems and network analysis of target interlinkages, and mapping of policy alignment and gaps. The study highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each of these analytical approaches, and demonstrates how they can be rapidly combined and applied.

The global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commenced in 2016 and provide an evidence-based framework for sustainable development planning and programming until 2030. There is emerging international practice and a growing catalogue of related reviews, assessments, guidelines and publications. While the expert community is clearly emphasising the need to adopt evidence- and science-based approaches to SDG implementation, policymakers now face the challenge of implementing the SDGs simultaneously in a coherent and integrated manner. Regular systematic reviews of national progress and approaches to implementing the SDGs are advisable to ensure that emerging science and knowledge is effectively informing national practice. This paper reviews the recent academic and expert literature as well as national experience in implementing the SDGs in 26 countries. It uses a systematic approach to analyse the degree to which key implementation stages and approaches recommended in the expert literature are being adopted and applied to support national SDG implementation on-the-ground. The review highlights that while progress has been made in some initial planning stages, key gaps remain in terms of the assessment of interlinkages, trade-offs and synergies between targets. Gaps are also clearly evident in the adoption of systems thinking and integrated analytical approaches and models. This is problematic as it may undermine effective implementation and the transformative potential of the SDGs. As more countries turn their attention to the SDGs, the review underscores the considerable risk that they will pursue the same ‘siloed’ or ‘linear’ approaches to sustainable development that have met with limited success in the past.

The ophiolites of Othris, northern Greece, and Troodos, Cyprus, are of mixed lherzolite-harzburgite and harzburgite sub-type respectively. Within both ophiolites an entire spectrum of harzburgite, plagioclase harzburgite, lherzolite and plagioclase lherzolite interpreted respectively as residual and highly, moderately and slightly modified upper mantle has been recognised. Plagioclase lherzolite frequently contains gabbroic segregations generated by partial melting and incomplete extraction. Othris shows the full range of mantle peridotites while Troodos is dominated by harzburgite with very minor occurrences of plagioclase harzburgite and lherzolite. Chemically, the plagioclase lherzolites have low contents of the basaltophillic minor elements, and a composition slightly more residual than postulated upper mantle compositions, suggestive of a preceding phase of minor depletion. The Othris and Troodos ophiolites seem to have formed under fundamentally different environments — Othris as a marginal ophiolite at the inception on rifting of continental crust, and Troodos later in such an event when spreading was well established.