A big data approach to assess progress towards Sustainable Development Goals for cities of varying sizes

Abstract

Cities are the engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide a blueprint for achieving global sustainability. However, knowledge gaps exist in quantitatively assessing progress towards SDGs for different-sized cities. There is a shortage of relevant statistical data for many cities, especially small cities, in developing/underdeveloped countries. Here we devise and test a systematic method for assessing SDG progress using open-source big data for 254 Chinese cities and compare the results with those obtained using statistical data. We find that big data is a promising alternative for tracking the overall SDG progress of cities, including those lacking relevant statistical data (83 Chinese cities). Our analysis reveals decreasing SDG Index scores (representing the overall SDG performance) with the decrease in the size of Chinese cities, suggesting the need to improve SDG progress in small and medium cities to achieve more balanced sustainability at the (sub)national level.

Development Goals towards Sustainability

“…Challenges in planning policies, new business models, strategies, and tools to measure or evaluate sustainability and reduce the uncertainty of the implementation process require new analysis that cannot be limited to analysis of the environmental dimension of sustainability alone [14]. In this direction, indicators need to be developed to monitor the progress of sustainability goals [15]. The application and implementation of the SDGs require setting development priorities to be applied in different contexts, and quantitative approaches are proposed to integrate the different SDGs at both local [16] and global [17] levels.…”

Falling behind: Evaluating projected sustainable development goals progress across varied income countries

“…The aforementioned findings provide further corroboration of previously examined literature, which has investigated both macro trends and subnational patterns within lower-income countries or cities. Liu et al's research, for instance, shed light on the challenges faced by lower-income cities in China as they strive to match the progress achieved by their more developed counterparts (Liu et al, 2023). Similarly, an analogous relationship was observed within the dispersion of cities in Italy, where northern cities, characterized by greater industrialization, exhibited superior performance in relation to the overall attainment of the SDGs (D'Adamo et al, 2021).…”

“…While numerous studies exist that analyze the current progress of this subject, only a limited few venture into the realm of exploring its prospective evolution. In light of this observation, we draw upon relevant previous works on this topic as a point of reference to contextualize and elucidate the findings of our study (Hasan et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2023;Xu et al, 2020;Yin et al, 2023).…”

Exploring the Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on Sustainability Trends

“…As mentioned, the literature is limited with respect to measuring and monitoring not only the impact of the SDGs on sustainability but the SDGs' general impact, which is still a necessity [36]. When addressing these areas, what is found is mostly at the initial stage of the process and not measuring concrete impact, but rather proposing tools, frameworks or ideas for organisations to operationalise their potential impact on the SDGs, which again speaks to their complexity.…”