Strengthening GIS standards to improve monitoring of land indicators for SDGs: Using India as a use case
Pranab Ranjan Choudhury, Marcello De Maria, Laura Meggiolaro
Since 1968, when Roger Tomlinson arguably used in his seminal paper the term Geographic Information System (GIS) for the first time, the so-called geospatial revolution moved at an incredible pace. When, the geospatial revolution encountered on his way another revolution, the big data revolution, the need for standards became compelling. A variety of geospatial standards for both data and metadata have been developed during the 1990s and 2000s, and this process is still on-going at present day. Important initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognise the importance of assessing progresses with indicators spatially disaggregated and measured below the national level. However, despite the increasing availability of this kind of data, the lack of clear guidance and the lack of adoption of GIS standards undermines the interoperability of different existing statistical sources, and ultimately can compromise the achievement of socio-economic SDGs and targets. This paper presents India as a pilot case for strengthening the use of spatial standards in the socio-economic domain with a specific focus on SDGs. Based on the experience of mapping WLR in India, this research expands the focus to other land-related indicators in the SDG agenda.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
Only personal, non-commercial use of this document is allowed.