Geospatial practices for sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific 2020: a compendium
Geospatial information has been providing far-reaching solutions to pressing issues facing humanity, ranging from health, education, food security, agriculture, to disaster risk reduction and resilience-building. The effective integration of geospatial data, existing statistics and ground-based information and exploiting new data sources, analytics, and tools has proven instrumental to deliver timely information necessary for governments, businesses, communities and citizens to make evidenced-based decisions. However, despite advances in the availability and quality of geospatial information, several gaps and challenges remain on the effective use of geospatial information. To address this, this compendium demonstrates the diverse use for geospatial information and applications and the vital role that they will continue to play in the future. This compendium has been designed and devised for policy and decision makers working towards sustainable development as it shows clear linkages to both economic and social value. It showcases the benefits and importance of accessible, available, actionable and affordable geospatial data, tools and innovations to maximize its potential benefits to Asia-Pacific member States. It achieves this by highlighting relevant country situations and circumstances from across the region; these good practice examples cover the six priority areas identified in the Asia-Pacific plan of Action on Space Applications for Sustainable Development (2018-2030), including 1) disaster risk management; 2) natural resource management; 3) connectivity; 4) social development; 5) energy and 6) climate change.
