Practical Application on Sustainable
Development Goals
Since the inception of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) by United Nations
General Assembly in 2015, the 2030 Agenda
has provided a blueprint for shared
prosperity in a sustainable world where all
people can live productive, vibrant and
peaceful lives on a healthy planet (United
Nations SDGs Report Citation2019).
The report demonstrates that progress is
being made in some areas, and that some
favourable trends are evident in the aspects
of poverty, public health, access to
electricity, marine protected areas, climate
change, national policies on challenges of
rapid urbanisation, and sustainable
consumption and production.
On the other side of that progress, the SDGs
report 2019 also pointed out many areas that
need urgent social attention. The natural
environment is deteriorating at an alarming
rate: sea levels are rising; ocean acidification
is accelerating; the past four years have
been the warmest on record; one million
plant and animal species are at risk of
extinction; and land degradation needs to be
field surveyed. Governments are also acting
too slowly in the efforts to end human
suffering and create opportunity for all: the
sustainable development goals by 2030 are
being jeopardised as nations struggle to
respond to entrenched deprivation, violent
conflicts and vulnerabilities to natural
disasters.
Fortunately, as we go for these SDGs
indicators, a wide range of other parts than
governments – international organizations,
businesses, local authorities, the scientific
community and civil society – have engaged
with the SDGs in a manner that generates
great hope for the coming decade.
The International Journal of Image and Data
Fusion (IJIDF) has been focusing on the
technologies and applications behind the
natural resources, natural disasters and
human environment, it provides an excellent
platform to publish the latest developments
in Geo-spatial information sciences. The
issues published since 2010 show that image
and data fusion is a very active and practical
research field with many new technical and
methodological developments in an
increasing number of real-world applications.
In particular, the need and solutions for
prediction and early warning of major natural
disasters, rapid acquisition and processing of
remote sensing data for disaster information
extraction/interpretation and services,
disaster emergency cartography and service,
emergency geo-spatial information data
management. Image and data fusion
techniques can play an important role to
monitor such changes to our environment.
Specifically, according to the report on Goal
13 (Climate action), countries are developing
disaster risk reduction strategies in the face
of growing climate threats. As described in
Goal 1, climate change is already
exacerbating disaster risk. In the past two
decades, natural disasters around the world
caused huge amount of direct economic
losses. Over that period, climate-related and
geophysical disasters claimed an estimated
1.3 million lives (see SDGs
report Citation2019). Under the Sendai
Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–
2030, countries have been making efforts to
prevent new disaster risks and reduce
existing ones. The biggest challenges are
investment in disaster risk reduction for
resilience and promoting policy coherence
between the SDGs and climate change.
To this point, our journal contains many
original research papers and review papers
even in the first four volumes on the
applications about natural disaster
concerned on Goal 13. These papers are by
both world renowned scholars and talented
young researchers in the relevant field. Prof.
Lu applied a Radar image and data fusion
model for natural hazards characterization.
Paul W. Cleary et al. presented the
combining digital terrain and surface
textures with large-scale particle-based
computational models to predict dam
collapse and landslide events(Cleary et
al., Citation2010). Man Sing Wong et al. did
the research on detailed landslide
assessment by using aerial photographs and
satellite images fusion.
Besides the action on Goal 13, this journal
also has the contributions on natural
resources (on Goal 14), and sustainable
urban and human environment (on Goal 11).
Liang Zhai et al., according to the challenges
of rapid urbanisation, such as overburdened
infrastructure, worsening nature pollution
and unplanned urban sprawl, have been
taking action on Geographical Conditions
Monitoring, and the analysis model he
proposed would be able to reveal the internal
relationships between resources, ecology,
environment, population, economy, society
and other elements in geo-spatial interaction
and mutual influence. Bahia Lounis et al.
proposed a fuzzy-genetic mapping approach
for characterizing coastal water quality using
the combination of multi-spectral imagery
and in situ measurements. In addition, they
developed a valuable tool to evaluate the
pollution degree through estimated indices
maps. A pollution signature draw could be
constructed and examples from specific sites
were compared to highlight their pollution
degree. This technology helps us better
retrieve the most polluted case. Susheela
Dahiya et al. addressed a comparative study
of various pixel-based image fusion
techniques as applied to an urban
environment(Dahiya et al., Citation2013).
Prof. Thierry Toutin also focused on the field
of land cover classification by using airborne
LiDAR data(Zhu and Toutin, Citation2013).
Land cover/change is one of the most popular
research topics in IJIDF. It is a core problem
of SDGs in resource and environmental
monitoring, disaster monitoring, city
expansion, etc. Exploring in the journal, the
readers could discover more relevant
information in need. Furthermore, I
encourage you to dedicate your research to
the International Journal of Image and Data
Fusion.