Cloud services with big data provide a solution for monitoring and tracking sustainable development goals

To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), high-quality data are needed to inform the formulation of policies and investment decisions, to monitor progress towards the SDGs and to evaluate the impacts of policies. However, the data landscape is changing. With emerging big data and cloud-based services, there are new opportunities for data collection, influencing both official data collection processes and the operation of the programmes they monitor. This paper uses cases and examples to explore the potential of crowdsourcing and public earth observation (EO) data products for monitoring and tracking the SDGs. This paper suggests that cloud-based services that integrate crowdsourcing and public EO data products provide cost-effective solutions for monitoring and tracking the SDGs, particularly for low-income countries. The paper also discusses the challenges of using cloud services and big data for SDG monitoring. Validation and quality control of public EO data is very important; otherwise, the user will be unable to assess the quality of the data or use it with confidence.