Abstract
In the context of the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development” and the presented Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the process of developing and agreeing on indicators to monitor the SDGs implementation becomes fundamental. In this paper, we identify indicators for the sustainable development of cities that have the greatest potential for their underlying data to be measured by means of remote sensing. We first identified existing indicators, which are derived from the International Standard ISO 37120, “Indicators for city services and quality of life”, as being partly or fully measured by the use of remote sensing, and then presented these indicators to remote sensing experts in an assessment procedure. We then investigated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) weighting methods to identify the most relevant quality of life indicators that can be captured by means of remote sensing techniques. We assess the remote sensing experts’ knowledge in the context of Decision Support Systems (DSS), and by means of both a questionnaire-based approach and a pairwise comparison approach. The approaches are compared with each other regarding their complexity, their potentials and limitations, and the respectively identified remote sensing based indicators. We identified three indicators related to surface characteristics as having the highest remote sensing potential. When contrasted to the results of the pairwise comparison, the questionnaire-based approach revealed high usability and confirmability. In the end, this approach enables cities’ administrations to decide which indicators they want to cover by means of remote sensing, depending on the capacities of their departments.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for guidance on assessing possible future threats and supporting proactive decision-making in the context of sustainable development
In the context of the International Standard ISO 37120, “Indicators for city services and quality of life”, this research provides information regarding indicators that are best suited for the assessment by remote sensing
Remote sensing experts with different levels of experience and from different professional fields contributed to this research
Summary
There has been an increasing demand for guidance on assessing possible future threats and supporting proactive decision-making in the context of (urban) sustainable development. Political or topographical conditions within a city, in-situ measurements can be challenging due to financial limitations, time requirements, or lack of resources such as missing measurement devices or members of staff Until now, it has been difficult for planning authorities to select from the cornucopia of indicators, since existing indicators are often not standardized, consistent, or comparable over time or across cities [1]. The overall objective is to present urban planners with existing indicators that are derived from the International Standard ISO 37120, “Indicators for city services and quality of life”, and that are identified as being partly or fully measured by means of remote sensing. The achieved insights shall support the development of a particular methodology, which will allow the sustainable development of urban areas to be monitored in the future
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