A systematic review on the role of geographical information systems in monitoring and achieving sustainable development goal 6: Clean water and sanitation

Abstract

AbstractThe world has changed dramatically in the last two decades due to human intervention at regional and global levels. The fates of humanity and our planet are in our hands. Governments, international agencies, the corporate sector, and individuals must work together to shift away from unsustainable practices. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development, which comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Several published research supports SDG strategies in the last 5 years. Despite initial efforts, the U.N. declared that the world is not really on pace to achieve most SDG targets. Geographic information system (GIS) has been identified as an effective tool in accessing, monitoring, and achieving goals that have 15 years lifespan. This paper presents a systematic review of published articles that combined GIS and SDG in their research. Because these 17 goals include 169 targets, the assessment may be more difficult if all the goals were addressed. This study focused only on “SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation” literature. Google scholar was used to find the most relevant 25 studies. The variable attributes like SDG target addressed, study area, monitoring and improving strategies dealt, the particularity of GIS were analyzed in the literature review through content analysis. The systematic review has found that target 6.1 received enormous attention, and the inverse distance weightage (IDW) interpolation tool from the geostatistical analysis toolset was widely employed in the monitoring stage.