Supporting the measurement of the United Nations’ sustainable development goal 11 through the use of national urban information systems and open geospatial technologies: a case study of south Korea

Abstract

Geospatial information has drawn substantial attention as a means for building a common measurement and monitoring framework that can be employed across different countries all over the world for the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN). Determining the appropriate spatial units for measurements is a critical issue, particularly for the goals associated with the safety, resilience, and sustainability of cities and human settlements. Open geospatial technologies are expected to help address this issue of spatial measurement since they comply with geospatial standards and can be easily adopted by both developed and developing countries. This study evaluates the applicability of open geospatial technologies for the development of a common measurement framework for UN SDG 11. To this end, the study analyzes to what extent national urban information systems of Korea can support the measurement of the target goals and makes recommendations for how open geospatial data and technologies could fill the void that current systems cannot fill at present. The results of this study show that Korea’s urban information systems have an architecture built upon a standard-based open platform and thus can be easily extended by other open geospatial technologies for new developments. From the Korean case study findings, we concluded that open geospatial technologies could serve as an enabler for constructing a worldwide common framework for the measurement of sustainable development goals.