©Space4Water project

The EU Satellite Centre (SatCen) – EU Agency supporting relevant policies by providing geospatial intelligence services mainly based on the exploitation of satellite Earth Observation (EO) data – is involved in key initiatives to support the achievement of relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the usage of EO data, and therefore to support the EU contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Agenda.

Within the SDGs-EYES project, SatCen is defining a workflow to calculate the indicator 13.1.1 “Number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters per 100,000 population”, showing how EO data can become key to address critical situations in vulnerable regions. The methodology has been initially tested in the Sahel region, where the complex interactions amongst climate change, food insecurity and political instability are frequently related to the control of critical natural resources like land and water, to the occurrence of natural and man-made disasters (e.g. drought and flooding) and to other factors like poverty, demographics, and history of violent disputes.

In May 2024, SatCen will organize a webinar aiming at presenting several use cases that address relevant SDGs in different domains interlinked with security (e.g. climate security, water security), to show to any interested actor working in these domains the preliminary results of SDGs-EYES project and to foster dialogue among participants.

For more information, contact michele.lazzarini@satcen.europa.eu and/or rtdi@satcen.europa.eu

In overall terms, the UN SDGs have an intrinsic safety and security component, as they have been defined with the ambition of moving towards a better society in which safety and security of societies and citizens would be guaranteed. For instance, SDG indicators as 13.1.1 (Death by disaster) or other connected to resources, social and political insecurity, like: 1.5.1 (Disaster), 2.1.2, 2.4.1, (Food insecurity), 6.1.1, 6.4.2 (Water access), 8.1.1 (GDP per-capita), 11.1.1 (Urban slums), 14.6.1 (Illegal fishing), 15.3.1 (Land degradation), 16.1.2 (Deaths by conflicts) are closely related to current security concerns.